Novel
Quills of Desire
Binwell Sinyangwe · 1996
Synopsis
Wiza, a final-year pupil, very gifted and very ambitious, wants to go to university in Britain and marry an educated woman, but he comes up against the hostility of his headmaster and the jealousy of less brilliant classmates. Intelligent but hot-headed, he jeopardises his diplomas by his conduct and must choose between the poverty of the town and a return to the village, among his own people.
Context
Published in 1996 by Baobab Books, the novel was taken up in 2001 by Heinemann in its Public Policy Series, then reissued in 2011 by Gadsden Publishers. Its readers find in it the Zambia of the 1970s and 1980s, between village life and boarding-school life, and the tension between family tradition and personal dreams. The author went on to give a second novel, A Cowrie of Hope, to Heinemann's great African series.
Who it is for
For reading a Zambian novel of school and ambition, on the price of dreams of success through education.
Prizes and reception
Its readers speak of a bittersweet story of dashed hopes, in which the hero loses himself along with his dream.