Tendai Huchu

Tendai Huchu (born 28 September 1982), who also writes as T. L. Huchu, is a Zimbabwean author, known for his novels The Hairdresser of Harare, The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician (2014), and The Edinburgh Nights series.

Early life Huchu was born in Bindura, Zimbabwe in 1982.

Huchu's second novel, The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician, concerns a group of Zimbabweans living in Scotland, one of whom is secretly a spy.

Huchu wrote "The Sale" for AfroSF, which was edited by Ivor Hartmann and the first published anthology of African speculative fiction. The story concerns a man protesting the sale of the Great Zimbabwe to China under a colonial regime where the US and China control reproduction and force men to take feminizing hormones. The series began with The Library of the Dead, a dark urban fantasy introducing Moyo as a 14-year old who passes messages between the living and the dead using a mbira to help her family pay rent.

Huchu reflected that he would prefer to write in Shona but had received most of his literary education and exposure in English, making it so "your thinking is in English, not Shona; it's what the system was designed for." He says opportunities for writers in Shona are very limited, with the main publishing audience being school curricula, and only one literary journal accepting Shona fiction: Munyori.

Awards Year Work Award Category Result 2014 Caine Prize 2017 Nommo Award Short Story 2019 Nommo Award Short Story Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire Foreign Short Fiction 2021 Nommo Award Short Story Children's Africana Book Award Best Book for New Adults 2022 Nommo Award Novel Alex Award 2023Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Speculative Fiction 2026 Secrets of the First School BSFA Award Best Fiction For Younger Readers

Publications Edinburgh Nights series The Library of the Dead. New York, Tor Books, 2021, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, New York, Tor Books, 2022, The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, London, Pan Macmillan, 2023, The Legacy of Arniston House, New York, Tor Books, 2024, Secrets of the First School, New York, Tor Books, 2025, Standalone works The Hairdresser of Harare. Oxford, Weaver Press, 2010 The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician. Cardigan, AmaBooks, 2014