WELCOME TO SHIPIKISHA CLUB

Literary fiction for fans of Tayari Jones, Ayobami
Adebayo and Erin Kelly

Literary fiction for fans of Tayari Jones, Ayobami
Adebayo and Erin Kelly
In Kabwe, Zambia, Musunga Bwalya, a 39-year-old
policeman, is on trial for the murder of his wife, Florence
(Flo) Nanyangwe, a high school English teacher. He shot Flo
the night she confessed that their daughter, Mukandi,
fifteen, was not his biological child. Musunga pleads not
guilty.
WELCOME TO SHIPIKISHA CLUB tells the story of how
Musunga and Flo's 14-year marriage finally failed to
‘shipikisha' — a Zambian code word for the endurance it
takes to be married and female in Zambia. The narrative
alternates between Musunga and Flo's viewpoints. Their
perspectives on and experiences of their marriage are very
different, illustrating the contrast of standards for men and
women.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian lawyer & writer,
currently based in Minneapolis. Mubanga's debut novel, THE
MOURNING BIRD (Jacana Media, 2019), won the Dinaane
Fiction Award and was named one of Brittle Paper's Top 15
Debut Novels of 2019. Mubanga won the 2019 Kalemba Short
Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Nobrow and Bristol
Short Story Prizes in 2019.
Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals
including the Red Rock Review, the Menteur and Overland.
Mubanga is an alumna of the Humphrey Fulbright Fellowship
and the Young African Leaders Initiative. She is a qualified
lawyer, an MFA candidate at Hamline University in
Minnesota, and an editor at literary magazine Doek!.