| Summary: | The contradictions and traumas of the national liberation war in Zimbabwe (1966-1979) as well as the horrors and violence that marked that troubled period are conveyed from different perspectives by the Zimbabwean writer Alexander Kanengoni in Echoing Silences (1997) and by the British writer Alexandra Fuller in Scribbling the Cat. Travels with an African Soldier (2004). In the post-independence period, Zimbabwean narratives disclose the pain and suffering associated with the liberation struggle and the birth of the new nation; the search for identity in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, a country deeply fractured by colonial rule, combines personal experience and historical memory. Although a sense of failure and loss pervades both narratives, the painful process of de-silencing the past generates a cathartic effect, paving the path for healing and reconciliation.
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