Harare — Shimmer Chinodya 43, is one of Zimbabwe's most celebrated fiction writers.

His published works include Dew In the Morning (1982), Farai's Girls (1984), Harvest of Thorns (1989) and Can We Talk and Other Stories (1998). Harvest of Thorns, his gem of a novel which explores the intricacies of human relationships within the setting of the social and political changes of the 1960s and 1970s, earned him the 1990 Commonwealth Writers prize for the African region.

The book has been published outside Zimbabwe by Heinemann Books and so great an impact has it made that the author regularly receives communication in praise of the novel. It has been translated into German and is being sold under the title Dornenernte.

Chinodya's book of short stories, Can We Talk. . . earned him nominations for both the Caine's Prize for African writing and the ZIBF's list of Africa's Hundred Best Books. The final list will be drawn up in 2002.

Both Can We Talk and Dew will also be republished shortly, under the Heinemann Book label. Chinodya is a graduate in English literature and education and has worked as an educationalist, curriculum developer, editor and screen writer.

In 1995, he wrote the screen play for Everyone's Child, the highly acclaimed film on the plight of Aids orphans. Chinodya was born and bred in the Mambo township of Gweru but spent many of his holidays at his rural home in Gwanda.

Both homes provided a useful setting for many of the stories he later wrote. He grew up in a family of seven children.

His parents, both now deceased, were, he says, "simple folk". His father sold clothes in an Indian shop, while his mother was a housewife.

He attributes much of his enthusiasm for writing to his father. "I believe I became a writer because my father believed in books, books, and still more books.

He would bring me plenty of books."&He added with a laugh: "I hope he didn't steal them."&Chinodya attended Ma-mbo primary school and then from 1971 to 1976, Goromonzi High. His enthusiasm for writing really took off from Grade Five onwards when he would enter and win numerous competitions in creative writing and poetry.

In Form Three, he had a regular column in the Sunday Mail entitled The Rainmaking Beliefs of the Shona. He was obsessed with poetry for a great deal of his school life but says he began to move away from it and more towards fiction story writing when he began to find it "too limiting and too concise".

In Form Five, he felt comfortable enough to write his first novel, Dew in the Morning. The book was almost a tribute to his mother, a strong and enduring woman of whom he was very fond.

The story basically looks at the complexities of human relations within a constantly changing rural environment. It was published locally in 1982.

Just as Chinodya was about to write his 'A' levels in 1976, he was expelled from Goromonzi High for participating in a demonstration march in protest against the Rhodesian government's plans to call up for 'national service' all young black school leavers, before allowing them to proceed to the university. Chinodya completed his 'A' level in 1976 at St Augustine's, Penhalonga, a school sited just 10kms away from the war in Mozambique.

A common sight, he recalls, were the near empty dormitories as many schoolboys ran away to join the war. His musings on this and other aspects of the war are referred to in his next book, Farai's Girls, a story about a young adolescent boy who wakes up to love through experiences with various girlfriends.

Chinodya graduated from the University of Rhodesia in 1980 with an English Honours degree and a Graduate Certificate in Education. He spent two years teaching English language and literature at Zengeza One High in Chitungwiza before being recruited to the newly formed CDU (Curriculum Development Unit) by Fay Chung, the then minister of primary and secondary education.

The CDU has now been disbanded but in its hey day, it was responsible for overhauling the entire government schools' curricu- lum, creating and reviewing syllabuses, producing tea-ching modules to supple- ment teachers' texts, evaluating materials published by commercial publishers such as Longmans, and running in-service workshops for teachers. When he left the CDU 12 years later, he had risen to the position of editor-in-chief.

Chinodya believes that joining the CDU was one of the many "lucky breaks" he received in his life. These opportunities, he says, allowed him to expand and consolidate his writing skills.

He received another lucky break, two years later in 1984, again courtesy of Fay Chung who recommended him for a Masters in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop in the US. At the workshop, Chinodya and his colleagues spent their time writing, writing and writing some more.

"We would write two chapters, bring them to class, have them reviewed and then work on them again," he commented. Of immense benefit too, he remembers, were the semesters at which he and his colleagues interacted and discussed literary issues with three well-known writers at a time.

He was aged 27 at the time and despite the amount of work he had, he was still able to write three-quarters of his highly acclaimed book, Harvest of Thorns. The hero of the book is undoubtedly Benjamin, who struggles to find himself within the atmosphere of a changing political and social scene.

Although the message is undoubtedly a serious one, the book is not without its humorous moments as in the description of the courtship between Benjamin's parents, Shamiso-a shy girl from the rural areas-and Clopas, a confident messenger from town. Chinodya thoroughly enjoyed creating the humorous love letters which Clopas writes to Shamiso and which eventually led to marriage between the two.

He admits to bending the rules of the English language a little in some aspects of the novel. "I was doing what I wanted with the English language," he said.

"I was subverting it so that it could do for me what I wanted it to do."&Hence in his letters to Shamiso Clopas says: My heart is swolling (sic) and paining with love for you. I can't even do the job propery (sic) and the Baas is scolding everyday.

Please save my life and my job by marry me. You are the prittiest (sic) girl ever meet and to say pritty (sic) is telling god lie because you prittier than the word pritty. Your skin is like the mupichisi frute (sic).

Benjamin, the hero, has problems adjusting to his parents' deep religious convictions and is dogged by misfortune as when he accidentally chops off his brothers leg. He ends up at boarding school but runs away to the liberation struggle to escape punishment after he participates in an anti-call up demonstration.

Having joined the war, Benjamin is confused and unhappy and still searching for that elusive meaning of life within the guerrilla group in which he is placed. The author explores the tension within this group of seven as they cope with their adolescence and as they struggle to understand each others' sometimes illogical actions.

The book ends with Benjamin back from the war but facing a bleak future as he struggles to secure employment. Benjamin the author says, is "many people".

His township experiences mirror those of the author as do his often bizarre but amusing experiences at boarding school, for example, his attempts to square off with the school bully, Chemhere, when the latter orders him to bark and snarl at a bone, as part of his induction. Like Benjamin, the author participated in an anti-call up demo but that is as far as the similarities go, he says: "I certainly did not chop off my brother's leg, or grow up in a strong Pentecostal household-although the boy next door did-neither did I go to war.

The demo was the most radical thing I've ever done." &Chinodya describes Benjamin as an accidental hero. "I wanted to write a book about such a person, someone who becomes a hero unwittingly." &The author does not anticipate writing a sequel to this novel despite the fact that Benjamin would qualify to be a war veteran.

"I don't write sequels," he says, "but then anything can happen." &The book is a very worthwhile read. It is never dull for one moment and those who have ever experienced boarding school, who grew up in the 60s and 70s in Zimbabwe or who experienced the war, will be left with strong feelings of nostalgia.

In 1993, Chinodya attended a writing colony in Chicago, USA, where he and his colleagues-three African Americans and two other Africans- were given the basics such as food, shelter and a computer and then left largely to themselves to work on their creativity. In the six weeks that he was there, he took the opportunity to write half the stories in Can We Talk which was published in 1998.

The title story of the book centres on a couple, married for 16 years but estranged from each other and unable to talk to each other about their probleMs. &The man, for instance, says of his wife: "I hate the way you love to be ill, the way you court illness and gargle and cough and spit into the sink until you're really sick. . .I hate the way you love funerals, the way you're always going to bury people I've never met and who never come to visit." &Throughout, the man appears to voice more than the normal negative feelings that the average man might hold for his estranged wife. The author explains that in writing as he did, he was simply attempting to "test the limits of writability, how much I could put in, how much I could bend the rules".

Did the story reflect his personal experiences in any way? Only a little, he says. "All writing begins with the self and then moves outwards and encompasses other beings and reflects the general personal experiences of others.

But I like to talk, I believe in marriage and communicative relationships." &It is because this book and others by the author are so concerned with the dynamics of human and social relations that they remain as timeless and as popular as ever. From 1995 to 1997, Chinodya was a visiting professor at the prestigious St Lawrence University in New York, teaching African literature and Creative Writing.

Chinodya has written textbooks for the English language syllabuses in the schools-The Step Ahead New Secondary English series which consists of four books for students and teachers alike. Explaining the appeal of these books, he said: "I hate to bore students.

"I aim to create interest and relevance not irritate and alienate." &Book Two of the series, for example, includes a passage entitled, 'The Boyfriend' and among the activities linked to this extract is one which requires students to discuss what constitutes a Mr. or Mrs. Right and another which requires them to write letters to an agony aunt, relating a boyfriend problem. Chinodya is now adapting the same texts for schools in Malawi, Lesotho and Zambia.

He has published several children's books under the name B Chirasha, he edits books for the Zimbabwe Book Development Council and takes part in overseas reading tours. Chinodya admits that he has not written anything bigger than Harvest of Thorns but says he is currently working to change that.

Recently, he and two other Zimbabwean novelists, Charles Mungoshi and Rory Kilalea, were among the five short-listed candidates for the Caine Prize awarded for the best story by an African writer, published in English. He was selected for various stories in Can We Talk. . . The prize was won by Leila Aboulela, a Sudanese/Egyptian writer.

His comment on this: "In writing there is nothing called competition, if anything, you are competing with yourself, with your own potential, not with your colleagues. You are trying to write at least one good novel.

Losing a prize is an occupational hazard. I had a good time in London with Charles and Rory.

There was a solidarity between us. That's what writers need." &Chinodya is married and has three children.

In his spare time, he enjoys listening to African jazz and local music and likes to conduct discussions with "intelligent people with a good sense of humour". He does not aspire to be a political commentator, though.

"I am not good enough," he says, "so I do what I know best. . ."