Book details
The Madonna of Excelsior
A Novel
Author: Zakes Mda
The Madonna of Excelsior
$11.99
About This Book
Book Details
A new novel by a towering presence in contemporary South African literature
In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex between blacks and whites. Taking this case as raw material for his alchemic imagination, Zakes Mda tells the story of a family at the heart of the scandal -and of a country in which apartheid concealed interracial liaisons of every kind.
Niki, the fallen madonna, transgresses boundaries for the sake of love; her choices have repercussions in the lives of her black son and mixed-race daughter, who come of age in post-apartheid South Africa, where freedom prompts them to reexamine their country's troubled history at first hand.
By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, The Madonna of Excelsior is a brilliant depiction of life in South Africa and of the dramatic changes between the 1970s and the present.
Imprint Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN
9780374708238
In The News
“Mda has responded to South Africa's rapid changes and unpredictable transitions with a work that is itself a new kind of novel: one that combines Gabriel García Márquez's magic realism and political astuteness with satire, social realism and a critical reexamination of the South African past.” —Tony Eprile, The New York Times Book Review on Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness
“Mda's fascinating narrative skill reveals the past as a powerful presence in the present: of his characters, and of all of us, as we live.” —Nadine Gordimer on Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness
“[An] inspired synthesis of history, myth and satire about this emblematic seaside village, and about post-apartheid South Africa by extension.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times on Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness
About the Creators
The Madonna of Excelsior