A stunning memoir that transforms our understanding of a generation.

Simukai Chigudu was one of the first generation to be born after the end of colonial rule in Zimbabwe. Growing up, he heard stories about his grandfather’s murder by the Rhodesian regime, how his father had been imprisoned and tortured as a student before joining the bloody war of independence as a guerilla, and how his mother had thrown off the strictures of the past to build a successful career helping other women do the same. Yet Simukai’s early life was also steeped in British tradition. With his classmates, he sang English folk songs, read Shakespeare, and played cricket.

In 2002, he was one of thousands to leave the country as it descended into political violence and economic collapse. His new home: a boarding school in the north of England. What followed was a culture shock that unravelled his understanding of the world, his family, and himself.

Chasing Freedom is his profound and remarkably moving story – that of a boy shaped through his parents’ buried trauma by the great currents of late-twentieth-century history. It is the story of a family haunted by the cause of liberation, and of a new generation, still searching for their promised freedom.

‘Utterly captivating . . . told with such clarity and precision that I forgot I was reading’ - DINA NIYERI, author of The Ungrateful Refugee

‘Will teach you more about the legacies of colonialism than a hundred op-eds or a dozen textbooks’ - SATHNAM SANGHERA, author of Empireland

‘Simukai Chigudu writes compellingly, lucidly and beautifully . . . an eye-opener’ - ZEINAB BADAWI, author of An African History of Africa

Pages: 352, Dimensions: 13.8x13.8cm