‘I Liked to Think of Myself as a Cool, Distant Observer of the World’

Academic and author of The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe, Simukai Chigudu, is expanding his writing beyond traditional academia and into narrative nonfiction: ‘I hesitated about making this move, questioning whether this is the kind of writing I “should” be doing and fearing how the world might react.’

Written by Simukai Chigudu

Nov 19, 2021

Photo Illustration by Ojima Abalaka / THE REPUBLIC.

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?

My early encounters with literature veered haphazardly through many different genres and styles that it is hard to neatly characterize the kinds of book I read. At the more exalted end of the spectrum, I read bestselling literary fiction from India that my mother purchased from Schiphol, Jomo Kenyatta or Heathrow airports during her extensive travels. Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Rohinton Mistry were on my bookshelves; I was in awe of their command of language but didn’t understand their works as a whole. The context was too far removed from my own to be intelligible to me at the time.

I dipped into white writing about Africa, both memoir and autofiction written by the likes of Peter Godwin and Bryce Courtenay. I enjoyed these books, but they left little room for me to imagine myself in literature, even when set in Africa. And then, at school, I met Chinua Achebe in English and Albert Camus in French, whom I continue to read today. But I also need to shout out a 1990s craze in many middle-class African homes to read the canonical self-help books that became cultural markers of America’s can-do, entrepreneurial ethos. As a remnant of that era, I still re-read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey from time to time—it contains a rare wisdom despite the kitsch of the self-help genre.

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About the Author

Simukai Chigudu

is Associate Professor of African Politics and Fellow of St Antony's College, University of Oxford.

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‘I Liked to Think of Myself as a Cool, Distant Observer of the World’

You've Reached Your Limit of Free Reading.

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