Kariba

“You don’t see many stories set in Zimbabwe, which made this graphic novel a bit different for me. The art is nice and colourful and depicts the nature of southern Africa really well. The characters are well written and it’s a good story. I like it. The main character, Siku… has to make a decision and face her powers and stop the river god getting killed. So she goes on a big adventure with some pirates and an Italian boy whose mum is an engineer working to build the dam. The Kariba dam really exists on the Zambesi river. It was built in the 1950s so the story is set then, although it is fantasy. It’s about having to make a choice between the environment and development, or whether there is a way to find a balance. This book has quite a lot of pages, I think it’s best for 10-13 year olds.” Read more...

The Best Graphic Novels for 10-12 Year Olds

Harald, Children

“The reason I love Kariba is that it’s a good comic: it lets the art do the work and makes you care about the people in it. It’s mixed with this myth of the Zambezi River god, Nyami Nyami. It reproduces that myth quite faithfully and ties it up with history, which is about the dislocation of people for projects like the Kariba Dam. People die building these dams and they also have to move to make way for the water. That has a real impact.” Read more...

The Best Comics on African History

Trevor Getz, Historian