[1] Her first published book was a collection of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), which was followed by five novels: Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002).

In 1987, she immigrated to Canada and she married John Jose, a Canadian teacher whom she had met while he was teaching at Njube.

[6] At York University, Toronto, she completed an undergraduate degree, a master's and a PhD, and taught literature.

She took on themes such as rape, incest and infanticide, and gender inequality in Zimbabwe before and after the country's war of independence with sensitivity and courage.

"[7] In 2004 she was awarded the Swedish PEN Tucholsky Prize "for a corpus of works dealing with taboo subjects".