CONTEMPORARY FICTION (SOUTH AFRICA)
The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan, 2024
R350 from The Book Lounge
This is a book of ghostly double-lives: two wives, two time periods, two names, twins joined and then separated. The bonds that linger, the losses that haunt us. It’s about the ways in which we can carry a place with us – in the Bollywood films Pinky watches, in the bones of the houses we build, the language we use, the awareness of Durban crumbling. And it’s about the ways we may be trapped betwixt and between – we ourselves are the djinn waiting in the shadows for a hundred years. I never felt firmly grounded in the story – but perhaps that is the point, the sense of witnessing from the periphery, the wavering at the edge. Shivani Ranchod
LEGACY FICTION (ZIMBABWE)
Black Sunlight by Dambudzo Marechera, 2024 (1980)
R285 from The Book Lounge
Dambudzo Marechera’s Black Sunlight is a bold, experimental exploration of identity, morality and socio-political unrest. The novel follows Christian, a photojournalist entangled with the anarchist group Black Sunlight in an unnamed totalitarian state. Through a fragmented, stream-of-consciousness narrative style, the novel blurs the lines between reality and hallucination, reflecting both Christian’s inner turmoil and the nation’s crumbling socio-political climate. With vivid and unsettling imagery, Marechera explores the complexity of human experiences and the existential search for meaning, while critiquing oppressive systems and exposing the destructive nature of radical ideologies. Unconventional yet thought-provoking, Black Sunlight is a compelling read. Nokwanda Mngxitama
