Weeping Tomato - Samantha Vazhure Rumbidzai

The practice of storytelling is, by and large, defined by and confined to the parameters established by any combination of several dynamics: space, time, theme, language, and genre among them. In Weeping Tomato, the author endeavours on a surreal sojourn that blends and moves between realms and phenomena that, at first glance, have no business being juxtaposed and paralleled - and triumphs in so doing.The story reads like Mutsvairo's Feso - meets Black Panther - meets - Vera's Nehanda - meets - Turnipseed's A Love Noire; all without losing its definitive identity or becoming overwhelming. It is the story of forbidden love as much as it is one of the African renaissance; a story of the immigrant experience as it is of the hereafter; a story of selfishness, self-affirmation, and selflessness. Weeping Tomato is a brilliant story that will inevitably serve as a timestamp in the evolution of the Afropolitan literary tradition.

S. Mavima

Weeping Tomato is a startling tale that is both foreign and familiar. Rumbidzai effortlessly interweaves chiKaranga traditions with the tropes of a cold and westernized Zimbabwean diaspora with a masterful attention to detail. Weeping Tomato confidently jumps from prose to poetry in a tapestry of rich description and life like characters we've all met. I could not put this book down.

T. Ndoro

Two distant lovers, going through intense love for each other, through electronic platforms, is the most charming technique to this story.  They continue to try to meet each other physically in order to consummate their love. That they are: a post-menopausal woman in the so called first world, versus a young motor mouthed man in a violent part of Africa adds pace to this transcendental story. Weeping Tomato is a work of genius, an intensely realistic portrayal of a woman gripped by an insatiable desire for freedom.

M. Chirere

Weeping Tomato is life-affirming epistolary fiction that drags the reader into the intrigue, fears, and conflicting desires of an older married woman wrestling with guilt and the need for freedom from her dutiful conservative upbringing. Her younger secret lover talks of his deep longing for her, and she sends him poems in response, building a private world that only they can inhabit. Her growing sensuality and desires are described with unflinching honesty and joyful abandon. But how does the otherworldly afro-futurist fever dream that introduces the story fit in? The tragic finale might break your heart.

M. Stuart