Author: Chris Wadman
Publisher: Jonathan Ball (2011)
ISBN-10: 186842460X
ISBN-13: 9781868424603
Condition: Very Good, slight bumps to the corners and a yellow strain to the half-tile page.
Binding: Softcover
Pages: 300
Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.4 x 2 cm
+++
by Chris Wadman
+++
The price of a bag of mangoes has just hit twenty thousand dollars in Zimbabwe. Incensed, hospital bus-driver Teddington Chiwafambira has become a man capable of anything. Expelling a group of mentally infirm patients and a couple of orphans at a small roadside settlement, he takes a larger fare from another stranded group, and unwittingly delivers the leadership of the MDC Youth Wing to Harare's main psychiatric ward.
The story unfolds as a political farce as ZANU PF garner political mileage from the confusion and Teddington is rewarded with a farm and status within the war veterans.
The two orphans are located and taken to the William Westward orphanage in Harare where they fall under the tutelage of an unlikely hero. Thomas is young, socially inept and a student teacher, living with his adopted mother, an elderly woman who has a mystical connection with birds. But on his return to the orphanage he resolves the institution’s financial woes by setting up a business selling moths over the internet to foreign collectors.
Ongoing mischief in a nearby village is deemed to be the work of goblins known as 'zvikambo', and a would-be goblin catcher, Cuthbert Kambazuma, is called in. When the orphanage's relative opulence and agricultural endeavours catch the attention of Teddington, who orchestrates a land invasion, Thomas calls upon the goblin catcher to assist. Cuthbert, it transpires, is a charlatan but not without theatrical talents.