This paper focuses on “reverse culture shock” in a Zimbabwean novel penned by a sojourner returning to the country at the brink of independence. Reverse culture shock is the emotional and psychological distress suffered by people returning home after a number of years overseas (Kagani, 2019). Effects include disorientation, insecurity, alienation, depression and withdrawal. The novel Coming Home is a semi-autobiographical text mediated through the lenses of the returnee protagonist Simon Nyamadzawo who recollects the twilight moments of the colony Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Several weighty issues confront Simon who has difficulty piecing together this hesitant morphing society partly because he himself, has evolved. In sync with the protagonist who is struggling with this dual identity, the paper mixes Eurocentric formalist lenses with a context-centric African approach to make sense of this watershed moment for a society in transition. As the microcosmic issues surrounding identity, belonging, racial hostility and uncertainty play out for Simon in the text, it is apparent that the broader national macrocosmic shift to independence is similarly no smooth transition.