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Original Essays | October 18, 2009

Victoria Hislop: IMG From Leprosy to Lorca — Strange Inspiration

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My first novel, The Island, was inspired by a chance visit to a tiny island leper colony off the coast of Greece on our summer holiday. It was a... Continue »
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Ways of Dying

by Zakes Mda

Ways of Dying Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Winner of the M-Net Book Prize

Shortlisted for the CNA and Noma Awards

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 battered top hat, to comfort the grieving families of the victims of the city's crime, racial hatred, and crippling poverty. At a Christmas day funeral for a young boy Toloki is reunited with Noria, a woman from his village. Together they help each other to heal the past, and as their story interweaves with those of their acquaintances this elegant short novel provides a magical and painful picture of South Africa today.

Ways of Dying was awarded South Africa's prestigious M-Net Book Prize, awarded by the TV channel M-Net to books written in one of South Africa's official languages, and was shortlisted for the Central News Agency (CNA) Award and the Noma Award, an Africa-wide prize founded by Shoichi Noma, onetime president of Kodansha International.

Synopsis:

"Ways of Dying, " one of the first novels to be published after South Africa's black majority won democratic rule in 1994, is already recognized as a comic, touching, and profound novel of love and strife about Toloki, a "professional mourner" in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa.
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About the Author

Zakes Mda, novelist and playwright, has received every major South African prize for his work. Born in 1948, he has been a visiting professor at Yale and the University of Vermont. He is writer-in-residence at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. His most recent novel, The Heart of Redness was nominated for the Commonwealth Prize.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
ginababie, April 21, 2008 (view all comments by ginababie)
ways of dying is a literal genius .zakes mda uses dark humour to illustrate the darkness that exist in south africa post and in apartheid era.there is an element of hope only if we come to grips with the past and join to make the new south africa prosper.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780312420918
Author:
Mda, Zakes
Publisher:
Picador USA
Location:
New York
Subject:
General
Subject:
Death
Subject:
Blacks
Subject:
Grief
Subject:
South Africa
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Love stories
Subject:
Funeral rites and ceremonies
Subject:
Weepers
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
General Fiction
Edition Number:
1st Picador USA ed.
Edition Description:
Picador USA
Series Volume:
EDO-SO-2001-1
Publication Date:
August 2002
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
216
Dimensions:
8.26x5.51x.57 in. .46 lbs.
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