"Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township of Bulawayo, in the late 1940s, the novel tells the story of Phephelaphi, who glows with vitality and a secret sense of her own freedom and independence.

When she meets the much older Fumbatha, he fills her "with hope larger than memory." He, in turn, "wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him." But despite their genuine happiness, Phephelaphi is not satisfied with this "one-room" love alone.".

"She is pulled toward the experience of other lives, the possibility of alternative futures. Her youth enables her to believe that she is in control of her own body, of her own destiny. but the closely woven fabric of Makokoba, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own."--BOOK JACKET.