Writing Zambia Into the Page Without Explaining Zambia to Zambians

Writers who set their work in Zambia often feel pressure to explain it. A character gets into a minibus in Lusaka, and the next sentence describes minibuses as a common form of public transport in Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa. The story stops so that the author can write a guidebook entry, and the Zambian reader, who needed none of it, is treated as a visitor to their own country.

Most readers, wherever they live, would have understood enough from "gets into a minibus" to keep going. If the route, the fare or the seating later affects the scene, the writer can bring in what matters at that point. The page does not have to halt every time a familiar part of life appears.

Writing Zambia well is not a matter of removing context. It is a matter of deciding whose eyes the reader is looking through, what that person would notice and what the reader needs to know at that moment. Sotrane Publishers is a Lusaka publisher whose mission is to publish and promote Zambian and African literature, and our editors review Zambian-language passages where the relevant expertise is available. The aim of that work is clarity on the book's own terms, so that a story can welcome readers from elsewhere without treating Zambians as strangers to their own lives.

Let the place change what characters do

Consider a woman going to Makkala nguzu Market in Choma with a child on her back. One version of the scene pauses to describe "the vibrant colours and bustling sounds of an African market". Another follows her search for a particular size of school shoes while the child grows restless and a seller tells her which stall might have them. The second version has a purpose. She wants something, time is passing and the place shapes what she does.

That is an illustrative scene, not a report about anyone in the photograph, and its lesson is about writing. The first sentence could be pasted into a travel advertisement for dozens of places. In the second, the market is not wallpaper. It presents people, obstacles and choices.

Apply the same test to a Copperbelt family story, a campus novel or a memoir set in a village. If the place name were removed, would the action unfold in exactly the same way? The setting need not control every scene, but when it matters, a road, a timetable, a household arrangement, a workplace or a relationship should affect what the people can do. A novel becomes specific through consequences, not by scattering local nouns across a generic plot.

Pay attention to scale as well. A child might notice the missing button on a school uniform while her mother worries about a payment due that afternoon. A visitor to a town notices signs that a lifelong resident passes without thinking. Write the details that belong to the point-of-view character. A narrator who explains every familiar object begins to sound like someone standing outside the scene with a microphone.

Trust what a reader can work out

First-time authors are sometimes told that every reader outside Zambia needs every Zambian term explained. That advice often produces clumsy prose for everyone. A reader who sees a character set down a plate, call the family to eat and argue over who forgot to buy relish can follow the action without a definition after each word, and the meaning of the quarrel may matter more than an inventory of the meal.

Context can come from action. If a child is told to buy something before visitors arrive, the reader learns that the errand matters by seeing who is waiting and what happens when the child returns late. If a family uses a term of address with affection in one scene and in anger in another, the contrast teaches more than a bracketed translation.

This is not a ban on explanation. A specialised practice, a joke that depends on a word's second meaning or a decision the plot turns on may need more help. Ask what the reader must understand to follow the next action and supply that much in the voice of the book. A line of dialogue, a reaction or a short piece of narration may be enough. If several pages depend on a distinction, explain it properly rather than leaving the reader to guess.

Viewpoint matters here too. A character who has never visited a particular town may naturally ask how something works, and an adult explaining a custom to a child can be convincing. Two adults who have lived with the same routine for years are unlikely to recite its history to each other for the benefit of the audience. When that happens, the author needs to find another route for the information or decide it is not needed.

A story can welcome readers from elsewhere without treating Zambians as strangers to their own lives.

Do not ask one Zambian life to stand for everyone

Zambia is a country of different towns, languages, households, generations and incomes. The phrase "this is how Zambians do it" can make a writer sound confident while flattening all of those differences. A character's experience in a Lusaka boarding house should be written as that person's experience, not as a rule about home life, and a scene in Choma should be observed on its own terms rather than asked to represent every market in the country.

This matters particularly when a book is meant for readers outside Zambia. A writer may feel pressure to supply a recognisable package of a dusty road, a crowded market, a grandmother dispensing wisdom and a proverb at the end. None of those elements is forbidden, but each must belong to the actual people and story. The grandmother might be impatient. The road might be tarred. The most important thing in a market scene might be a missing receipt, a quiet exchange between siblings or the narrator's failure to remember a face.

The opposite pressure is real too. An author may strip out local relationships and speech in the belief that a "professional" book should sound as though it could happen anywhere, and lose the very material the writer knows best. Our position on AI in book writing discusses how a quick automated rewrite can erase particular experience, and an anxious human edit can do the same damage.

Being specific does not mean adding more description. It means choosing the right detail for the right place. A reader may remember a father who keeps a folded delivery note in his shirt pocket because the family is waiting for a parcel. They are unlikely to remember a paragraph listing every shopfront he passes.

Let languages behave as people speak them

A word in a Zambian language can carry tone, closeness or an idea that a neat English substitute does not quite hold. It can also be used carelessly. A writer who knows a phrase from one household should not assume that every speaker of that language, let alone every Zambian, uses it the same way.

Start with who is speaking to whom. Does the person switch languages because they are addressing a relative, making a joke, keeping something from another listener or reaching for a more precise word? That choice reveals a relationship. A decorative word dropped into dialogue for "authenticity" reveals very little.

If your manuscript uses a language you do not speak confidently, consult a fluent speaker and show them the whole exchange, not a single word. Ask whether the register suits the character and the situation. If a translation matters to the plot, decide how the reader will come to understand it. Repeating a sentence in English immediately afterwards often sounds artificial, while a reply, an action or a later consequence can carry the meaning more naturally.

There is no universal rule that every unfamiliar word must be italicised, translated or listed in a glossary. The book's readers and its pattern of language should guide those choices. A glossary can help in a non-fiction work with recurring specialist terms, while in a novel it may be better to let a word become familiar through use. Be consistent enough that readers learn how to read the book, and never make characters speak like footnotes.

Explain what the reader genuinely needs

Some books are meant to teach. A Zambian author writing a practical guide for readers in several countries may need to say which examples are specific to Zambia. A memoirist may need to establish why a particular trip was difficult at the time, and a children's book may need enough context for a young reader to understand why an adult is worried. Supplying that information is good writing.

The problem arises when a book explains what neither the character nor the intended reader needs, and then fails to explain what actually matters. A book for Zambian first-year students might spend a page defining "resilience" and never show what to do when a student misses lectures because transport money has run out. A school story might define a familiar food and leave the child's fear of being sent home unexplored. Useful context answers the live question in the scene or argument.

Before adding an explanatory paragraph, write the reader's likely question in the margin. "Why can't she make the appointment?" deserves an answer if it drives the story. "Where is Zambia on the map?" probably does not, unless the book's purpose requires it. In non-fiction, ask whether the information changes a decision the reader is being asked to make. In fiction, ask whether it clarifies a motive, an obstacle or a consequence.

Readers outside Zambia are perfectly capable of learning from a story, and readers inside Zambia are not all the same either. A reader from Livingstone may need context for a family practice from another region. Give context because the book needs it, not because you assume there is one local reader who knows everything and one foreign reader who knows nothing.

Edit with the writer, not over the writer

An editor should be able to ask "Would this character say this?" and "Will the reader understand what changes here?" without automatically replacing unfamiliar material. The author should be able to answer that a wording is deliberate, or that the action can be made clearer without turning it into an explanation. Good editing is a conversation about effect, not a process for making every page sound alike. When Sotrane edits a manuscript, changes are proposed in tracked changes and the author accepts or rejects each one, which keeps that conversation on the page. Our article on what professional editing actually changes can help if you are deciding what kind of help your draft needs.

A short test with real readers can settle arguments that feel endless at a desk. Give the same scene to a Zambian reader and, if your audience includes them, to a reader unfamiliar with the setting. Ask each where they felt lost, what they understood without help and which details felt false or overexplained. Rather than asking whether they liked it, ask them to point to the sentence that caused each problem.

If the book draws on your own family, take care with the people behind the details. A vivid local scene can still expose information that someone expected to remain private, and our memoir privacy guide considers that choice separately from the craft of description.

Before sending a chapter on, try removing three kinds of sentence from a copy: the one that defines a familiar object for no reason, the one that announces what "all Zambians" think and the one that uses a place as scenery while the plot could happen unchanged elsewhere. Read the scene again and put back only the information a reader truly needs.

Zambia is already present in the lives, choices and speech of the people who live here. A writer's task is to let those lives reach the page clearly enough for any reader to follow, and with enough trust that a local reader never has to be introduced to their own home. Where have you read a Zambian scene that felt completely natural, and what did the writer choose to leave unexplained?