Itai Muwati

Contesting Representations of Nation and Nationalism: the Zimbabwean Liberation War Novel Across Languages Itai Muwati

In this book, which is a culmination of my doctoral thesis, I demonstrate that historical literature on the liberation war fought in the 1970s is a veritable stakeholder in the history issue in post independence Zimbabwe. It operationalizes history in a manner that not only illuminates but stimulates more thinking and debates on Zimbabwe's tumultuous politics of contested hegemony. It brings out crucial perspectives on nation and nationalism that potentially embellish current scholarship which has tended to neglect literary genres whenever discussing 'serious' matters. This is vital particularly given the fact that history is at the centre of politics in contemporary Zimbabwe and as such this discourse needs to be engaged from plural perspectives. I further argue that the contesting representations of liberation war history in novelistic discourse make possible the evolution of new contents and thrusts since literature invests in the power of the image and the symbol to comment on important national matters.