Book excerpt: Irony and humour have always been used to counter frustration, despair and to expose double standards. In these ten sharply polished stories, Mandishona explores the dark comedy that lies just beneath the surface of tragedy in Zimbabwean society in the last decade. His perceptions leave few untouched: politicians, new farmers, exiles, stranded queues and inflation that renders the currency worthless... Truth and morality are dispensable in a society where wealth is rewarded with respect, integrity marred by untruth, rumour displaces fact, and power is only interested in its own survival. Mandishona holds a mirror up to reality and without equivocation asks us to look at what is real: the likeness or the distortion and what it is we want to see.