Yvonne Vera interviewed by Jane Bryce

Interview with Yvonne Vera, 1st August 2000, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Weaver Press

When I recently met Yvonne Vera, I had read her earlier works, Nehanda and Without A Name, only because the publisher had given them to a mutual friend in London. To date, all her novels have been produced by the highly respected Zimbabwe publishing house, Baobab Books, Harare. It is the fate of African writers who choose to publish their work on the continent to be less well-known internationally than those whose work is taken up by metropolitan publishers. Yet what I had read of Yvonne Vera’s work had left me with a burning desire to find out more about her, and this was a major part of my decision to attend the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, fifteen years after my last visit to the country in 1985.