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Chimanimani-based writer Penjeni Madzikangava’s novel “Dungeon of Despair” (2016, Harp Bookz International) is a multi-layered tale of family disunity, love, and hope in an important historical era. It captures a colonial period when Africans were caught unawares by culturally intrusive modernity. Madzivakanga’s story happens in a socio-cultural context that many adults in Zimbabwe can very well identify with.Interesting it is to note that the story in the 173-page novel “Dungeon of Despair” progresses without dialogue. Dialogue is a “literary composition in the form of a conversation between two people”. From the first chapter to the end, a few characters ‘converse’ as the omniscient narrator, who is a boy, tell the story. A bit of conversation is heard in the 33rd chapter when narrator is involved in crime in Botswana, tries to escape but is captured by Lebone. In most chapters, the narrator tells, mediates, interprets, or judges the other characters and the unfolding situation in the family, the country and world at large. Common with autobiography, you say? Could this novel be autobiographical?

This writer found the novel queer in this regard, wondering if it is a fault or style, hence a conversation with the author followed. He said he has a good reason for casting dialogue almost entirely out of the novel.

“The limited usage of dialogue in ‘Dungeon of Despair’ is a style I chose to use. I was convinced that the style would be suitable as the narrator was always frustrated like someone thrown in an abyss who would vent off his anger through narration as compared to dialogue,” said Madzivakanga.

A few new writers who also spoke to this writer found it a little “disturbing” that one could write a short story or novel without dialogue. Their opinion, however, was general because they have not yet read the novel. In writing skills training workshops or manuals, young writers are told dialogue is one of the important basic rules of fiction and a whole lot of reasons are laid out before them to the extent that the rule sticks with them throughout their writing practice.

Madzivakanga breaks this rule that “dialogue is a writer’s friend”. His story, set in the places Mutare, Mt. Darwin, and Botswana, is told by an all-knowing young narrator who develops into a man as story progresses. Author charms the reader with his exploration of a family gripped by disunity and poverty, haunted by the war, and in search of some love.

The poisonous conflict in the family is exposed when the father’s (Mudhara’s) authority is challenged by his sons who are coming of age. He asserts that a real man marries only after buying ‘a she-goat, a cow, a suit, a bicycle, a wrist watch, obviously the Oris type, some blankets, a bed, and a wardrobe’. His sons could not listen to him because he also hasn’t finished paying lobola for his wife (Amai). One of the sons, Rotario, is told the family would not accept a Samanyika daughter-in-law and that he must marry a Korekore woman for some given reasons.

These diversions are many in “Dungeon of Despair” that you are longing for a return to the main story. However, it seems the narrator uses them to build the atmosphere of place or the hype of the time in question. For instance, he tells of the soccer legends such as Oliver Kateya, Kenneth Jere, Western films, local music stars, and radio programmes like Mvengemvenge which were popular back then.

The romantic part of the story begins when Rotario, who is now working and ready for marriage, sends message to Tete in Mazoe that he is looking for a lady to marry. A reader, who is aware of the common African practice of aunts being used as agents in love affairs guaranteed of marriage, would chide the aunt in the story for poorly handling Rotario’s case.

Rotario sends his Tete/aunt a well-described photo which she must show the woman she thinks is suitable for her brother’s son yet the aunt reveals it to three young women (Roffinna, Roziwinda and Rokadhiya) by hanging it in her dining room. The trio falls for the man in the photo. They compete to win aunt’s recommendation. She consults a n’anga to help her choose the right woman and Rokadhiya is chosen. Events twist when Rotario visits Tete to see the woman she has chosen for him. On arrival in Mazoe, before meeting the chosen Rokadhiya he meets Roffinna and it is but love at first sight!

Events that follow develop from romance and love to disappointment and further family break-up. The usual mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law fights set in when Rotario brings home by elopement the uneducated farm girl Roffinna who is also his choice against the gods.

Roffinna is blamed for adding salt to the open wound. She is shown as a witch. The family disintegrates; shifts from place to place. The war of liberation comes into the scene through the mother who falls for a freedom fighter after Mudhara deserts family.

The conflict continues even as family members spread in different directions. The despair is felt as Amai does all she can to fend for the children, including narrator. In Mt Darwin, Amai and the kids come into close contact with freedom fighters and Rhodesian forces. The wickedness of war upon an innocent people is exposed.

One would wish for forgiveness to exist in the family but none of it comes by. Underneath Madzivakanga’s tale there is a running river of lost love, lost oneness, and he exposes the sins of the characters to teach the world that family is the initial learning ground for every child.

However, not everything and everyone in “Dungeon of Despair” is desperate. There are moments of sweet journeying back to an era that once gripped black young men and women with its sports, the arts, fashion, etc.

Born in the late 70s in Mt Darwin, Penjeni Madzivakanga grew up in Dangamvura (Mutare) where he attended Rujeko Primary School and Nyamauru High School. He is a trained journalist, a teacher, and a musician.