Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga. The prosecutor claims Sali shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom. There are no witnesses. Sali pleads not guilty. But her story does not begin with a gun. It begins fourteen years earlier – with her rebellion against the pressure to find a husband, her affair with a wealthy married man called Doc and her discovery that she’s pregnant on the same day of Doc’s unexpected death.

To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Sali accepts Kasunga’s proposal and finds herself suddenly thrust into the Shipikisha club: her society’s expectations that it is a wife’s duty to endure. Over the years, Sali navigates her husband’s infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their money troubles and her postpartum depression in silence. Until the day she speaks her mind and Kasunga puts a gun in her face.

The trial is a national scandal. Many are called to testify – the maid, Kasunga’s mother and Ntashé, Sali’s fifteen-year-old daughter. Even after Sali’s diary is dissected and laid bare for all to see, Sali calls no witnesses to her defense. With Kasunga gone, only Sali will ever know the truth. But is the truth enough?

As Sali awaits her fate, held in appalling conditions in Mukobeko Prison where inmate rape and the threat of HIV infection are rife, she hopes against hope. Before the verdict is announced, memories and words, regrets and accusations fill the courtroom, time crashes into itself, slowing to a near halt while racing ahead. Sali calls no witnesses because no one else was there when it happened. Even her diary doesn’t contain the whole story. So why must she alone carry the blame?

Told through the rotating perspectives of Sali, Ntashé and Sali’s mother Peggy, The Shipikisha Club is a riveting story of gender politics in Zambia and the world at large.