Our man in Africa

This novel comes with two mysteries attached, one substantial, the other superficial. The big mystery is the author’s identity. Gender-neutral, nominally Anglo-Saxon, almost provocatively bland, ‘C.B. George’ screams ‘pseudonym’ to any reader. A call to the literary agent confirms the suspicion: the author is keeping his identity secret ‘for personal reasons’, which may or may not be connected to Zimbabwe’s political situation.

The second puzzle is why said author chose The Death of Rex Nhongo as his title. The preface explains that ‘Rex Nhongo’ was the nom de guerre of Solomon Mujuru, the Zimbabwean general whose body was discovered lying in the charred debris of a farmhouse he had seized from a white farmer in 2011. The story is supposedly connected to what many Zimbabweans assume was a political murder. But the connection — everything hinges on a gun which may or may not have been used to kill Mujuru — is so slight that I found myself riffling fruitlessly through the pages, assuming I had missed it on first read-through.