In 1982 a young American historian arrives in Zimbabwe filled with idealism and enthusiasm for the benevolent new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and the postcolonial new beginning for that country. His historic research leads him to an apparent murder case, unresolved since the days of the bush war. As he draws – or is lead – or yet mislead – closer to an answer, he becomes involved with a local woman through whom he soon finds himself in the inner circle of the new ruling class.

Once the euphoria starts dissipating he encounters increasingly menacing instances of corruption and repression, including threats to himself to abandon his investigation. With every new revelation a new layer of decay is exposed and with that, his idealism retreats. In the process, the meaning of the novel’s title, taken from Mugabe’s conciliatory rhetoric at the beginning, gradually comes to mean: we are all trapped and compromised into the moral tangle and the destruction into which all the promise has degenerated. An extremely accomplished and compelling novel that deftly employs the instruments of a detective thriller.

JAMES KILGORE was born in Oregon and grew up in California. He graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1969. Living in the politically colatile San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s, he ran afowl of the law. As a fugitive he lived in the United States, Zimbabwe, Australia and finally South Africa, where he was arrested in November 2002. He was extradited to the United States where he served six and a half years in prison. 'We Are All Zimbabweans Now', his first novel and first publication under his real name, was written during his years of incarceration. He is married with two children.