_________The word efface has appeared in three articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 8 in the book review “A First Novel Explores Zimbabwe’s Troubled History” by Dinaw Mengestu:Zamani, the narrator of Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s remarkable first novel, “House of Stone,” has a troubled relationship with the past. For him there is history, and then there is “hi-story,” a subtle but important distinction for a man who wants more than the incomplete, fragmentary tale his uncle passed on to him before dying. … It’s a remarkable feat. Through Zamani, Tshuma shows us how much work it takes to efface the past, and, through “House of Stone,” she proves that those efforts are no match for a novel as ambitious and ingenious as this one.

Source: New York Times May 21, 2019 06:00 UTC