Since the Ukraine crisis, writer and author of ‘The Age of Great Power Rivalry: Russia’s Geopolitical Vision and the Weaknesses of International Diplomacy’, Blessing Simura, has been thinking a lot about Western diplomacy: ‘In many parts of Africa the debates are on whether Africans should be on the side of Ukraine (and with it the West) or on the side of Russia. The truth is that Russia’s invasion has shown those who are willing to see that most of what we are lectured on by the West are just words.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I read a cocktail of books. I enjoyed reading my older siblings’ books. Sometimes, I would have to steal their books because they were not comfortable with me taking the books out of fear that I would ruin them. I liked novels mostly, such as the Shona vernacular novels, Gonawapotera, Maidei, Kusasana Kunoparira, Tambaoga Mwanangu and Kurauone. I also read English ones like Crossing the Boundary Fence.
I also enjoyed opening the pages of the big secondary school books and looking at the pictures—textbooks like the one we called ‘Zimscience’, and the geography one which we called by its author’s name, ‘R. B. Bannet’. My brother had the biblical storybooks about various prophets and saints like Moses, Samuel and Mary which I also used to read. The Bible itself was also an interesting text for me when I was young and the majority of my reading of the Bible was done when I was young.
When I started high school the books I read changed and there was more meaning in reading. I read both academic books and novels—novels like Oliver Twist, God’s Case by Dan Fulani, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Matigari and A Grain of Wheat, by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Charles Mungoshi’s Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura?, as well as many more other books by authors like Louis Le Amour and other local ones. I developed an interest in history at this stage and in scholars like Stan Mudenge, D. N. Beach, J.R.D. Cobbing and T. O. Ranger. On European history, I enjoyed reading David Thomson, A.J.P. Taylor, Agatha Ramm among others.
In college, my reading interests became even more diverse—I started reading books on history, politics, development studies and international relations. I had less time for fiction and now I don’t even know when I last read a novel.
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