The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu

Vumbi is a hairdresser extraordinaire, the highest paid stylist at Khumalo Hair and Beauty Treatment Salon, where no beauty treatments have ever been offered. She knows the secret to making a woman feel beautiful: just make her look like a white woman. Vumbi reigns supreme, "queen bee" of her "personal fiefdom", until hip, handsome, mysterious Dumi appears on the scene and replaces her as Mrs Khumalo's favourite employee and the darling of the customers. Cold war breaks out between the two when Dumi is promoted over Vumbi. However, through a series of events, Vumbi begins to realize that there is more to Dumi than his annoying charm. They become allies, until Vumbi discovers Dumi's devastating secret. And so unfolds a pacey, hilarious story about loss, protest, tolerance and the lack of it, and the rigours of life in the Zimbabwe of a few year ago. The author, Tendai Huchu, uses humour to delve into that subject that remains taboo in Africa and in Zimbabwe particularly, that of homosexuality. Through his characters, Huchu demands that his readers acknowledge that this divisive issue transcends social class and is not going away. Huchu displays a preoccupation in this novel with human inconsistency. For example, Vumbi is able to find empathy for Dumi and her estranged brother but is unspeakably harsh to her househelp with whom she shares a background and who looks after her child. Dumi's parents adopt her and lavish attention on her but banish Dumi, their own flesh and blood, without a second look. Huchu also seems concerned with the myriad ways one can move and up and down Africa's class system. A bittersweet story that invites readers to call their assumptions into question.