Innovative, interesting, out of the ordinary, are accolades used to describe the stories in Of Life, Love and Death. They grew out the turbulent years of Malawi's third republic, through the years beyond to the second and into the third and reflect the times, places, and concerns of the people at all times. Some were molded, if not mutilated, by the oppressive political climate Malawi experienced in the thirty years of Banda's first republic between 1964 and 1994. Some of them could not have been conceived and written during that period without reprisals from the all-powerful Censorship Board, which dictated what could or could not be published. Others were written, but denied publication until the more democratic era after 1994.