Bones

I recently had the pleasure of viewing Hove on an American talk-show discussing the catastrophe unfolding in his native Zimbabwe. There were several talking-heads gathered around the table, but Hove was the only one with something to say. Curiously, the American think-tank "experts" all carried on with a misplaced optimism, which no doubt is required in academe for advancement, whereas Hove never backed down from his dire warnings of national disintegration and betrayal at the hands of the sinister Mugabe. "Bones" is a startlingly beautiful piece of prose, a work of poetically wrought rage. Like Achebe's early work, which sought to express in English the idiom of his local people, the Nigerian Igbo, Hove strives to catch the lovely idiom of the Shona. Here we find a sustained narrative of anguish told by a poet with an eye for the telling detail, free of cant, free of ideology, a disciplined voice entirely focused on human experience.