Having someone to share my work with has been very helpful.” I have a writing partner who gives me pointers and I do the same. “What is important is not to write in isolation. He was constantly encouraging me to write, and gave me feedback on The Yearning once I was done with the second draft,” she says. “We really enjoyed the interview and when I met him at a book launch, he remembered me. Mashigo and Mda met while she was working as a radio presenter and interviewed Mda for her arts and culture show. “There are three books that made me the writer that I am and one of them is Ways of Dying.” The other two are Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga and The Colour Purple by Alice Walker.

What sets Mashigo apart, aside from this rich storytelling style, is her friendship with Zakes Mda, who she regarded as a mentor long before she met him. Baba lays me down on the cow skin in the middle of the room and sits cross-legged with his back to me.” I am there with my father, but I am also standing by the hut door. Then I focus my attention on Baba holding me in his arms.

The bowl rolls away from us and I watch it from behind sightless eyes. We’re always in disbelief about how bad the rain is,” Mashigo writes.Ī short while later, “My father’s arms catch me as my whole body becomes a collapsed lump of skin and bones. We, the sun people, stay indoors and sulk during winter. “Spring brings out the craziness in people. Mashigo blends the present-day modern Marubini with the memories of her traditional roots in a way that isn’t jarring to the reader. They break open the picture-perfect life she’s living to reveal fragments of her past that are intruding on the present in frightening ways. Then she starts having unexplained seizures. She’s got the French boyfriend and the fun dates with her best friend, all of which lulls the reader into thinking this is going to be a light-hearted novel about relationships. The book follows Marubini, a young woman living in Sea Point and working in the marketing team of a prominent wine estate. There are flashbacks to a childhood in Soweto, slices of a harrowing and life-changing incident, a swirl of sangoma ritual and a touch of family conflict. What starts as a tale of love and friendship about a young woman in Cape Town turns into something far more complex and unexpected.

This is a curiously indefinable first novel. The Yearning weaves a story with African roots into Sea Point modernity, writes Bridget McNulty for the Sunday Times

The yearning by mohale mashigo