A Wreath For The Dead is an anthology of short stories and poems about life in colonial and post- colonial Zimbabwe. Its main themes are the fragility of hope and the often overwhelming nature of destitution and despair.The anthology was commenced in 1998 and it was inspired at the time by two deaths in the family: my father in 1995 and my brother Edward whom I loved dearly] in 1998. At the time it was simply a collection of poems about birth, life and inavoidable death and the title was Wastelands. After a couple of years of writing mostly poetry, I began to compose short stories. Initially the idea was to write a semi- autobiograohical work tracing one's life from childhood, through youth to adulthood. That became too painful and i found that I could not write about certain things unless I presented them as pure fiction. Once I introduced fiction into this semi- autobiography the stories came thick and fast.