Rookie legal eagle's fight for justice

IRIS Mwanza’s bold debut novel is a tour de force that has one immersed from beginning to end.

- ORIELLE BERRY

The writer who is Zambian-American is described on the back flap as a legal eagle who has a string of law degrees and other key academic accolades under her belt.

Here she has crafted a story that puts her expertise courtroom experience to savvy use in a fabulous legal thriller slash coming of age story slash cautionary tale on the adverse stigmatisation of diverse sexuality. Wellbess Mulenga (better known as Bessy) is a gay man in 1990s Zambia in Lusaka ... then neither a country nor a jostling capital city where being “other” is in any way, shape or form was accepted.

Within the deeply steeped ‘straight’ morals of the African state, under former leader Kenneth Kaunda, Bessy is arrested for behaviour that is described as being “against nature”. You see, Bessy loves to dance, to dress up in somewhat flamboyant clothes as a woman and is glaringly effeminate. Enter recently graduated lawyer Grace Zulu.

While she is still a little green around the gills in her recently appointed position and, against the will of her boss Avaristo at DB & Associates, Grace takes up the cudgels for this young man when following a visit to her office, beaten and bruised, he disappears and then the subsequent discovery of his demise in police cells emerges. She takes on this pro bono case following five long months of proofing legal documents as a rookie lawyer at the legal firm.