SWEET MEDICINE

194pp., paperback, Johannesburg, (2015) 2019

Winner of the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award.

 A novel about a young woman's struggles to survive, set in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 2008.

"Panashe Chigumadzi's 'Sweet Medicine' is as fresh and bracing as mountain air. It presents us with a memorable gallery of characters, mainly women, headed by the indomitable Tsitsi, who have to negotiate their way around and often confront a patriarchal society. There are choice sequences that are rendered with humour and sensitivity. Written in the tradition of a bildungsroman, the novel grants us the eyes of a young woman with which to look at a society coming to terms with itself." Mandla Langa, author of The Texture of Shadows

Journalist and writer Panashe Chigumadzi was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1991. She grew up in South Africa and was a founder of VANGUARD magazine. She is the author of the narrative essay These Bones Will Rise Again.