Leroy Mthulisi Ndlovu’s short stories make one nostalgic for a youth lived on the streets of Bulawayo, a city presented in the collection in all its beauty and with all the tragi-comedy (more tragic than comic really) of a down-on-her-luck but still vivacious and sweet-natured whore: you might not always like what she’s doing but you can’t help rooting for her. This short story collection is that whore: lovable in the extreme, uniquely appealing and with just enough hints at horror to keep you reading and wishing you could stop. You will keep reading.

Ndlovu’s characters are nothing like you’ve seen before. They are charismatic, distinctive, tragic, relatable and best of all, they are proudly, undeniably Bulawayo.

A young barely-functioning alcoholic finds love in the midst of a haunting by his mother’s ghost and loses that love in the most heartbreaking way. A young boy discovers he’s been made into a cannibal without his knowledge or consent. There’s another young man who walks into the light - and back again. Do not make the mistake of thinking it’s a collection about young men with myriad problems - there are women too, and what women. The penny whores who aren’t quite what they seem. The lover who reads The Prophet and takes sexual liberation to new heights, with tragic consequences and of course the inimitable one known only as The Thoroughbred.Ndlovu writes with the lyrical skill of a master, seamlessly weaving isiNdebele into his tales so that it weaves through the collection reminding readers that is a collection conceived and written in the City of Kings and true to those kings, there is no mercy for the uninitiated. As the adage goes: ngeshwa ke isiNdebele asitolikwa.Some of the stories are shocking, all of them are appealing. From layout to subject to language and tone, this is a collection the like of which has not yet been published, and writing like you’ve never read: a perfect read for all of Bulawayo and indeed all of the literary world. The stories capture every sense to detail the beauty and expose the horrors of the city’s underbelly along with its surrounds. If you know Bulawayo you’ll enjoy this collection and if you don’t, you’ll wish you did.

Reviewer: Noluthando Leonorah Instagram: @curatepretty Twitter: @beautysdaughter

A wealth of Beauty, Tragedy and folly of youth told in neat and pristine prose

• Philani A Nyoni

For Ernest Hemingway, Paris was a moveable feast. His experiences there would stay with him for the rest of his life. For Leroy Mthulisi Ndlovu, Bulawayo is a moveable feast: the shebeens, the suburbs, downtown, the surrounding bush… transformed by the author’s extraordinary imagination, an imagination which combines the virtual world of the internet with the supernatural world of ancestors, of children yet to be born, of winged dogs drinking prize bulls into nothingness. The variety in this collection is impressive. There is humour, there is horror, there is yearning… and always there is Bulawayo. Ndlovu is an original voice.

• John Eppel