LOCAL author, Allen Kuzivakwashe Matsika, has published a debut novel titled Tuzu — Stupid Sitting Duck, which explores a wide range of issues such as collateral damage, family dynamics, gender, sexuality and religion.
Matsika told NewsDay Life & Style that the title of the book was deliberately meant to induce laughter over the absurdity of humanity.
“It is a call to humility, to laugh at ourselves, and accept the reality that only a few humans are perfect. The rest of us sometimes do and say the dumbest things. Many times, crazy things happen to us, we are stumped and tragically, we play the fool,” he said.
“Just think of those scorned in love, cheated in business, struggling with marriage and family relationship, among other issues. No one planned it, and very few could avoid it; they sat there and got whacked and only wondered how they could have been so stupidly blind, I mean blind. Maybe reading the book will prepare more people for inevitable moments like these.”
Matsika described the book as “a good accident” upon his decision to publish a short story after every two weeks last year.
He notes that each chapter was inspired by a social issue and a question of what life would be like if things were made more apparent through a kind of upside-down shock value commentary.
“I have always been fascinated with turning the world upside down and then right side up again, and in Tuzu — Stupid Sitting Duck — I may have just achieved that,” he said.
Although the story is set in a fictional country called Zawe, it mirrors a wide-range of Zimbabwean experiences, but Matsika said it was more global, reflecting on universal human experiences.
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“As someone who was writing while sitting in a room in New Mexico and reflecting on my American surroundings, Uzu is a reflection of human nature,” he explained.
“When the whole world and the human condition are scrutinised carefully, one will find every place inhabited by human beings reflected in Uzu, even the international space station.”
Matsika said the role of the writer was to be a voice of the voiceless in society.
He, however, expressed hope that readers will get an opportunity to laugh as they flip through the pages of the book.
“I hope to make people laugh with my writing and to move some to anger. Either emotion will get people talking about what they are reading, and by discussing the stories, they come alive, jumping from the paper to the real world. I hope for my stories to come alive in the world,” he noted.
Matsika said the new book was just the beginning as he was working on a historical epic set in the 1800s between the Limpopo and Zambezi.
“I am calling the whole process of writing this epic: The Rainmaker Project,” he said.
