Novels from Southern African Writers
Introduction African Short Stories, selected and edited by the legendary Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe and the prominent scholar C. L. Innes, was first published in 1985 in the Heinemann African Writers Series (AWS 270). The anthology serves as a curated map of the rich, diverse, and rapidly evolving landscape of modern African short fiction. In …
Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara is a landmark literary anthology published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Curated under the auspices of the Hay Festival and in celebration of Port Harcourt’s selection as the UNESCO World Book Capital 2014, the collection brings together thirty-nine of the most promising and distinctive writers …
Sue Nyathi’s The Polygamist is a complex, multi-perspective narrative that deconstructs the life and eventual death of Jonasi Gomora, a wealthy Zimbabwean businessman whose appetite for power and women leads to a tangled web of four wives and multiple mistresses. The novel is structured through the alternating voices of the women who shared his life …
In the poignant memoir Positively Me: Daring to Live and Love Beyond HIV, Nozibele Mayaba, writing alongside acclaimed author Sue Nyathi, provides a visceral and deeply personal account of her life journey, from a childhood marked by financial struggle to her public emergence as a prominent HIV activist. The narrative is framed by the central …
Sue Nyathi’s An Angel’s Demise is a multi-generational epic that uses the life of one woman, Angel Velile Williams, as a lens through which to view the tumultuous history of Zimbabwe from the late colonial era through the liberation struggle, the horrors of Gukurahundi, and the chaotic land reform program of the early 2000s. The …
Sue Nyathi’s A Family Affair is a sprawling contemporary African saga set predominantly in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, during the early 2000s. The novel meticulously deconstructs the internal lives of the Mafu family, a household that projects a veneer of Christian perfection while harboring deep-seated secrets, trauma, and the suffocating pressures of a patriarchal society. The narrative …
The narrative of Shamiso is a deeply textured exploration of identity, the lingering trauma of war, and the complexities of “third-culture” existence, shifting between the dusty villages and suburbs of Zimbabwe and the rain-slicked streets of Brighton and London. Narrated by Shamiso, a woman who begins her story “obese with grief,” the book serves as …
The narrative of Secrets of the First School begins with the startling realization that the protagonist, Ropa Moyo, is dead and has been cast into the Other Place, a bleak realm in the astral plane reserved for wayward spirits. This dimension is characterized by jagged rocks, formless deserts of slag, charcoal-hued clouds, and a constant …
Summary of Cape Fever by Nadia Davids Introduction and the Setting of Heron Place The narrative of Cape Fever opens on March 12, 1920, in the Cape Southern Cross Colony (modern-day Cape Town). The protagonist, Soraya, is a nineteen-year-old woman from the Quarter a predominantly Muslim neighborhood who seeks employment at 23 Heron Place. Her …
Laurens van der Post’s A Story Like the Wind is an epic exploration of the vanishing magical world of primitive Africa, seen through the eyes of François Joubert, a thirteen-year-old boy living on a remote frontier ranch called Hunter’s Drift. The narrative is grounded in the author’s belief that the “living spirit needs the story …
The narrative of Imraan Coovadia’s A Spy in Time follows Enver Eleven, a twenty-five-year-old junior case officer who begins his journey seeking adventure within the Historical Agency, an organization based in a future, post-apocalyptic Johannesburg. The Agency is dedicated to preserving the purity of history and preventing the emergence of a “multiverse” a chaotic splitting …
Damon Galgut’s A Sinless Season is a haunting, intensely atmospheric novel that explores the dark periphery of adolescence, the fragility of civilization, and the primitive forces of violence and obsession. Published in 1982 when Galgut was only nineteen, the narrative follows three juvenile delinquents Scott Berry, Raoul Dean, and Joseph Hamilton who are sentenced to …
Michael Stanley’s A Carrion Death is the debut novel in a gritty mystery series featuring Assistant Superintendent David ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department,. The title of the book is taken from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, specifically the line: “A carrion Death, within whose empty eye there is a written scroll!”. The …
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s 491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 is a harrowing and defiant account of her sixteen-month detention by the South African apartheid regime from May 12, 1969, to September 14, 1970. The book is primarily composed of a secretly kept prison journal, which was lost for forty-one years before being returned to her in 2011, …
Ivan Vladislavić’s 101 Detectives is a sophisticated collection of short stories that delves into the intricacies of professional observation, the weight of personal and collective history, and the absurdities of modern corporate and industrial life. The narrative often centers on characters who are “detectives” in a literal or metaphorical sense watchers, auditors, storytellers, and archivists …