The story that he tells, nearly 40 years later, is of his early days at home and in school, brought up in a strict mission household and conflicting with his father.

    Set in Makokoba, a black township, in the late 1940s, the novel is an intensely bittersweet love story. When Fumbatha, a construction worker, meets the much younger Phephelaphi, he"wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him." He in turn fills her "with hope larger than memory." But Phephelaphi is not satisfied with their "one-room" love alone. The qualities that drew Fumbatha to her, her sense of independence and freedom, end up separating them. And the closely woven fabric of township life, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own.Vera exploits language to peel away the skin of public and private lives. In Butterfly Burning she captures the ebullience and the bitterness of township life, as well as the strength and courage of her unforgettable heroine.

    Pictures the transition between the old white-dominated Southern Rhodesia, through the Bush War, to the new black regime of Zimbabwe.

    Should Remi, the first of his tribe to go to university, return to his people? Or should he continue to be a black hermit in the town?

    The story of Beukes - lonely, hunted, determined - who works for an illegal freedom organization, and of Elias Tekwane, captured by the South African police and tortured to death in their cells.

    An extraordinarily well-crafted work, this book is a work of vision. Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender and cultural change, it dramatizes the 'nervousness' of the 'postcolonial' conditions that bedevil us still. In Tambu and the women of her family, we African women see ourselves, whether at home or displaced, doing daily battle with our changing world with a mixture of tenacity, bewilderment and grace.

    In it, the main character Baako is a "been to", meaning that he has been to the United States and received his education there. As a result of this privilege, he is expected to return to his family bearing the monetary gifts which this status yields in Ghana. These material goods are bought with graft and corruption, which impoverishes the country's infrastructure. The author contrasts the decadence and materialism of those who see Baako as a cash cow with the philosophy of his blind grandmother, Naana, whose concerns are not of this earth.

    By the author of Kill Me Quick and Striving for the Wind.

    When a political refugee from South Africa joins forces with an English agricultural expert, the time-honoured subsistence-farming method and old ways of life are challenged.

    As they grew, so grew their rivalry—and their extraordinary talents. But while Rendani became a master carver of the animals that run in the wild hills and lush valleys of the land, Chata learned to carve fantastic beings from his dreams, creatures never before seen on the Earth. From this natural rivalry between brothers, Zakes Mda crafts an irresistibly rich fable of love and family. What makes the better art, perfect mimicry or inspiration? Who makes the better wife, a princess or a mysterious dancer? Ageless and contemporary, deceptive in its simplicity and mythical in its scope, The Sculptors of Mapungubwe encompasses all we know of love, envy, and the artist’s primal power to forge art from nature and nature into art. Mda’s newest novel will only strengthen his international reputation as one of the most trenchant voices of South Africa.

    They are about the brutalization of the individual's mental processes, until madness, violence and despair become the normal state of affairs for families in black urban areas.

    These short stories are all set in Mozambique.

    The middle-class pair become victims of the same brutal violence that the poor and powerless suffer.

    By the author of Houseboy.

    Gradually it becomes apparent that the local church men have been using the local girls for their own purposes. This novel is a biting critique of colonial life and missionary activity.