Mukiwa opens with Peter Godwin, six years old, describing the murder of his neighbor by African guerillas, in 1964, pre-war Rhodesia. Godwin's parents are liberal whites, his mother a governement-employed doctor, his father an engineer. Through his innocent, young eyes, the story of the beginning of the end of white rule in Africa unfolds. The memoir follows Godwin's personal journey from the eve of war in Rhodesia to his experience fighting in the civil war that he detests to his adventures as a journalist in the new state of Zimbabwe, covering the bloody return to Black rule. With each transition Godwin's voice develops, from that of a boy to a young man to an adult returning to his homeland. This tale of the savage struggle between blacks and whites as the British Colonial period comes to an end is set against the vividly painted background of the myserious world of South Africa.

Growing up in Rhodesia in the 1960s, Peter Godwin inhabited a magical and frightening world of leopard-hunting, lepers, witch doctors, snakes and forest fires. As an adolescent, a conscript caught in the middle of a vicious civil war, and then as an adult who returned to Zimbabwe as a journalist to cover the bloody transition to majority rule, he discovered a land stalked by death and danger.

At a turbulent historical moment, Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture considers the relationships between Zimbabwe's creative literature, history and politics. It presumes that literature and culture cannot be understood separately from larger social trends; and that besides being legitimate subjects of study in themselves, through foregrounding literary and cultural issues, insights into the present crisis inflicting the country can be achieved. The book is the result of a collaboration of scholars from southern Africa and overseas, whose work emphasises hitherto overshadowed subjects of literature, exposing new and untried approaches to Zimbabwean writing. The contributors focus on pluralities, inclusiveness and the breaking of boundaries, and elucidate how literary texts are betraying multiple versions and opinions of Zimbabwe, arguing that only a multiplicity of opinions on Zimbabwe can do the complexity of the society and history justice. Individual chapters consider the works of celebrated Zimbabwean authors such as Dambudzo Marechera, Alexandra Fuller and the late Yvonne Vera, alongside several Zimbabwean writers less well-known outside the country. Works of literature in the three major literary languages of Zimbabwe - Shona, Ndebele and English - are examined, alongside autobiography, history and memoir, questions of race in literature and racial identities of Zimbabwean writers, and the oft-neglected, arguably underrated Zimbabwean poetry. The contributors include Annie Gagiano, Caroline Rooney, Tommy Matshakayile-Ndlovu and Terence Ranger. Editor of the book, Robert Muponde, is based at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Ranka Primorac is a specialist in Zimbabwean literature with wide international experience.