The Lions' Den

A main character fighting against the odds, filled with grit from start to finish… We are taken to Zambia where we meet a Grace Zulu, she recently became a lawyer after beating all the odds. She grew up in a village where they only expected her to get married, have children and raise them. Against......more

Iris Mwanza takes on the controversial topic of gay rights and the stigmatism towards AIDS in Africa in her debut novel, The Lions' Den. She did a wonderful job writing this unique novel and you don't have to be part of the LGBTQ+ community to enjoy it. Iris goes beyond sexual orientation and focuse......more

The story is set in the early 90s, in the last days of Zambia's dictatorship. Our protagonist Grace is a newly qualified lawyer, who comes from a poor rural background, and trying to make sense of urban life, prejudices, politics, and social norms around her. The driving force behind the story is th......more

A lot happens in this short novel, and it brings home the AIDS crisis and the hateful ways the LGBTQ community is treated, especially in Africa. I like that the story was told from Grace’s point of view, as a young female lawyer fresh from the villages who saw how AIDS can ravage a family, but also......more

I thought the story was so good and loved the afterword from the author that she wanted to write something about the violence queer people in Zambia suffer, but didn't want to write from a perspective she knew nothing about and thus decided to write this book about a lawyer defending a boy for being......more