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The heart of redness by zakes mda6/25/2023 ![]() ![]() Although he spent his early childhood in Soweto (where he knew political figures such as Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela) he had to finish his education in Lesotho where his father went into exile since 1963. It is, arguably, the first great novel of the new South Africa - a triumph of imaginative and historical writing. Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, a novelist, poet and playwright. ![]() The Heart of Redness is a seamless weave of history, myth, and realist fiction. One hundred fifty years later, the two groups' decendants are at odds over plans to build a vast casino and tourist resort in the village, and Camugu is soon drawn into their heritage and their future - and into a bizarre love triangle as well. The failed prophecy split the Xhosa into Believers and Unbelievers, dividing brother from brother, wife from husband, with devastating consequences. There in the nineteenth century a teenage prophetess named Nonqawuse commanded the Xhosa people to kill their cattle and burn their crops, promising that once they did so the spirits of their ancestors would rise and drive the occupying English into the ocean. Disillusioned by the problems of the new democracy, he follows his "famous lust" to Qolorha on the remote Eastern Cape. The result is a novel of great scope and deep human feeling, of passion and reconciliation.Īs the novel opens Camugu, who left for America during apartheid, has returned to Johannesburg. ![]() 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 the country's past. ![]() A startling novel by the leading writer of the new South Africa ![]()
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