When I received the request to write a foreword to "Footprints in the Mists of Time", a tour de force novel recently written by Spiwe Mahachi-Harper, I hesitated, wishing to disqualify myself from such a mammoth undertaking. Beyond being just a consumer of literature, what could I, an economist and a banker, have to say on any literary work, especially this particular one, I wondered.
I had been privy to earlier drafts and had seen the manuscript transform into a novel that one Zimbabwean writer and critic, Memory Chirere, has dubbed Zimbabwe's longest novel to date in any language. To write a foreword to the novel was, however, an entirely different matter, yet I was also conscious of the great honour bestowed upon me.
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