"A generous, patient, wry and intelligent voice…[that] suggests not just a writer who can seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor. We also encounter a writer who has the power to shock and frighten us, to astound and anger and...
The hero of Zakes Mda's beloved Ways of Dying, Toloki, sets down with a family in Middle America and uncovers the story of the runaway slaves who were their ancestors.
Toloki, the professional mourner, has come to live in America. Lured...
A startling novel by the leading writer of the new South Africa
In The Heart of Redness — shortlisted for the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize — Zakes Mda sets a story of South African village life against a notorious episode from...
As Zakes Mda's fifth novel opens, the seaside village of Hermanus is overrun with whale-watchers-foreign tourists determined to see whales in their natural habitat. But when the tourists have gone home, the whale caller lingers at the shoreline,...
In Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda's acclaimed first novel, Toloki is a "professional mourner" in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa. Day after day he attends funerals in the townships, dressed with dignity in a threadbare suit, cape, and...