"Creating a world that feels both incredibly real and legendary, Mapepa beautifully explores the formation of Zimbabwe as an independent state in a way reminiscent of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu. A truly insightful debut from an exciting new Zimbabwean author with a talent for writing the human experience." - Booklist
"In telling stories of the bonds between mothers and daughters, from the playful to the profound, Mapepa delivers a novel with profound emotional resonance." – Electric Literature, "The 15 Must-Read Small Press Books of Fall"
"Like her literary Zimbabwean compatriots NoViolet Bulawayo and Tsitsi Dangarembga, both authors of Booker Prize shortlisted titles, Mapepa gifts savvy international readers with illuminated windows into their mutual native country. Beyond the novel's culturally and historically specific details, Mapepa's characters inspire empathy as strong mothers, daughters, sisters, and women in a borderless, (still) male-dominated world." – Shelf Awareness, "The Best Books This Week, December 4, 2023"
"Mapepa’s
Ndima Ndima is a deeply-woven and emotional coming-of-age tale about owning your power and strength as a young woman, in the midst of utter surrounding chaos." –
Books of Brilliance, "7 New Indie Titles to Read This Fall and Winter"
"With its push and pull between tradition and modernity, male and female, peace and unrest, this collection would be an excellent choice for book groups or a world literature class. […] So many schools read the classic Things Fall Apart by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe; this novel with its focus on female protagonists could be an excellent pairing with that novel." – Youth Services Book Review, Starred Review
"In her striking debut, Tsitsi Mapepa presents suburban Harare, Zimbabwe, and its residents in fresh and radiant prose. [...] At once searing and elegant, Mapepa takes on violence and peace, strength and compassion, pain and beauty in one unforgettable book. " – Ms. Magazine
"[Mapepa] uses a writing style that is spare and to the point. [...] The stories, told chronologically, hang together well, with a novelistic arc characteristic of the best novels-in-stories. [...] It is a testament to Mapepa’s writing that, as she intended, readers feel pulled into the women’s woes, a constant reminder that, according to [main character] Zuva, 'We are all related through humanity.'" – Washington Independent Review of Books, "Our 51 Favorite Books of 2023"
"Mapepa’s prose flows smoothly, like listening to stories from an old friend. The description is vivid yet terse, painting a picture while handing most of the image to the reader’s imagination. With its matriarch and four girls living together, some might draw comparisons with Alcott’s Little Women, but Ndima Ndima is its own creature, distinct and resilient." – BlogCritics
"While this poignant novel is grown from a literary heritage, it is also utterly original, like the new way of being its characters must inhabit.
Ndima Ndima is many things: a deep portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship; a synthesis of past and present; an achi
