Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives, edited by P Orner & A Holmes, Publisher's Group World Wide, R179.95

This could be a desperately depressing book were it not for its indirect but resounding tribute to human courage and endurance. Composed of transcribed interviews with black and white Zimbabweans, the book is a series of unvarnished, restrained but excruciating accounts of personal suffering under the Mugabe regime (with glances back to Ian Smith's Rhodesia). The testimonies are grouped under geographical headings (including "Exile"), and come from a wide range of people of all ages, genders and occupations. All are preceded by brief introductions; and the whole is a gruelling portrait of life under a systematically brutal government.