Sascam Express

2009. A country (Zimbabwe) is recovering from a crippling inflation. But Laina has lost everything: colleagues, a successful career, family, and the old, safe life. With her niece Junior, a school leaver, they hop from job-seeking to creating jobs to religion and back.

A friendship grows between Junior and Zira, a retrenched tourist guide turned pimp. When Laina decides to sell her house in desperation, Zira introduces her to an estate agent whose marriage crumbled when his wife evaporated into the diaspora during the peak of inflation. Together, the unemployed, the underpaid and people with untapped talent became so disgruntled they form a movement, the Sascam Express.

In this profoundly moving novel, Masitera handles the weighty themes of deprivation, unemployment, and exploitation with superb lightness and wit.

(SASCAM is an acronym for Salisbury Association for the Care of the African Mentally handicapped.)