A laundry list of issues without any overarching structure
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Yet again, another book that looks like a novel but isn’t one at all. In Zambia in the 1980s, Grace Zulu is a newly graduated lawyer, and with no support from her harried superior is thrown into a pro bono case of a young gay dancer, when being gay could mean violence or even death. When she turns up at the police station to meet her client for the first time she discovers that he’s been beaten up, and she too gets hit by the police officer. No matter what she does, she can’t get any further with the case, and she has to call on extraordinary efforts from her distant boss, friends, allies and the boy’s family to get the case going. Does Grace have the strength to overcome all the odds against her, or is this just the start of her futile journey?

Without giving anything away, this isn’t really about the case itself. The boy’s fate is pretty quickly confirmed and then it’s Grace’s case to take on or not, to force the police to give evidence of their own corruption. Alongside this, Grace gets embroiled with the nation’s attempt to become a working democracy, the plight of homosexuals in society, class divisions, the power of money, her own backstory: it feels like a laundry list of issues without any overarching structure. There is no attempt to really parallel Grace’s life with her client’s, to look at sex, love and friendships from both straight and gay perspectives, to make some sort of point about her reliance on found family to get to where she is and how the boy’s found family (and birth family) move heaven and earth to get him back.

It might look like a novel, but fails to do any of the things that a novel can; in fact, it feels more like a screenplay for an issue (now historical) but which spectacularly fails to connect with the people whose lives it most affects.

Two and a half stars

Grace escapes patriarchal oppression/arranged marriage, and tries to help Bessy do the same from bigotry.
Set in Zambia, in the 1990s, this book deal with important themes and topics.
The pacing is 4 stars. The themes 5.
Overall narrative and characterisation are 3 stars in my experience.
I am glad I read this book.

Iris Mwanza takes readers back to 1990s Zambia in her insightful historical crime fiction debut The Lions’ Den. While the action of this novel centres around a young lawyer and her pro bono case, Mwanza uses her characters and scenario to explore discrimination, the AIDS epidemic and the broader political history and movements in the country at the time.
Grace Zulu is a rookie lawyer for a commercial law firm, handed on of the occasional pro bono cases. That case involves a young man called Wilbess “Bessy” Mulenga, arrested for committing homosexual acts in an intensely conservative country. Grace pushes against the system and then finds that Wilbess has been officially released only he never made it home and the police have not record of him leaving. Despite the misgivings of her boss, Grace pits herself against the system, stirring up a broader political movement in the process.
The Lions’ Den not only gives readers an insight into Zambian culture and politics in the 1990s through the case that Grace is working on but in the backstories of many of the characters who participated in Zambia’s anti colonial movement and the story of Grace herself. Grace’s backstory, how she came to leave her village and go to university is a fascinating one and gives great insight into her strength and determination as a character. In doing so, The Lions’ Den once again shows the power of crime fiction to draw readers in and illuminate a particular time and place.

Gripping and informative, I learned a lot about Zambia and its legal system reading this. I enjoyed Grace’s character, but found the background characters to be lacking and a little flat. However, the book was thought provoking and shed light on an important topic, and felt equally as entertaining as it did educational. The emotions felt by Grace were also felt by us as readers, which is something that is hard for convey in writing. A really fascinating read.

I wasn't sure what to think going into this one but I was pleasantly surprised.

I know very little about the issues which were raised in this book, set in 1990's Zambia. We are introduced to Grace, who escaped an arranged marriage and became a lawyer, and her first client Wilbess 'Bessy' Mulenga. Bessy is a young man who has been arrested for crimes 'against nature' namely being gay and having sex with another man.

Quickly arrested, Grace struggles to get Bessy some sense of freedom pending his trial and when Bessy goes 'missing', she is up against it even more in a country where those who are gay are treated incredibly poorly.

This was a short novel at only 250 pages but it tells a really difficult story very well and I definitely loved Grace's determination to get justice for Bessy.

a brave and needed book from a clear up and coming author. this book was brave where it shouldnt have to be and so inspiring. it made you feel braver yourself but at times you held such sadness in your heart. the words and plot and characters took hold.
you are given the unfairness of a system of a time ago and a country far away. but oh dont think its not relevant to you, to us, to now. because it is. and sadly it might be more relevant than we want to face. today's world needs readers to keep reading these stories. and we need bravery of the character within them.
i truly gave all my time to this book because i wanted more than others i have read recently, to give it my full time. it also made me go do some research into the things that i came across which helped me hugely.