As gay characters have been rather rare in Zimbabwean literature, Tendai Huchu’s first novel, The Hairdresser of Harare has attracted a lot of attention when it was published in 2010. The story of Vimbai, a single mother who dreams of owning her own salon, and Dumisani, her friend who tries to hide his sexual preferences, thus works as a catalyst to explore different aspects of a society in crisis. For those reasons, the author has been both praised and criticized. In this article, I argue that, in the novel, the depiction of homosexuality is closely related to the use of popular literary genres like the romance novel.