When he lands in Harare North, our unnamed protagonist carries nothing but a cardboard suitcase full of memories & a longing to be reunited with his childhood friend, Shingi. He ends up in Shingi`s Brixton squat where the inhabitants function at various levels of desperation. Shingi struggles to find meaningful work & to meet the demands of his family back home; Tsitsi makes a living renting her baby out to women defrauding the Social Services. As our narrator struggles to make his way in ` Harare North`, negotiating life outside the legal economy & battling with the weight of what he has left behind in strife-torn Zimbabwe, every expectation & preconception is turned on its head. This is the story of a stranger in a strange land
- one of the thousands of illegal immigrants seeking a better life in England
- with a past he is determined to hide.