Zakes Mda
South Africa
Communal and wry, a collective narrating voice moving through grief with dark comic timing: mourning treated as both ritual and performance.
Mda grew up between South Africa and exile in Lesotho, where his father, an activist lawyer, had fled political persecution, and worked across an unusually wide range of creative fields, as a playwright staged internationally, a painter, and eventually a beekeeper, before turning seriously to the novel in his late forties, after apartheid's end.
Ways of Dying, published in 1995, followed a professional mourner navigating funerals and shantytown violence in a South Africa still raw from transition, narrated by an unusual collective 'we' that treats grief as both communal ritual and dark comedy. Mda went on to write a string of further novels blending magical realism with township and rural life, and has taught creative writing at American universities while maintaining his bee farm back in South Africa.
Their books in the atlas
- 1995
Ways of DyingLvl 5magical realism - 2000
The Heart of RednessLvl 6historical fiction
Meanwhile, elsewhere
If you like Mda, try
b. 1959Ben OkriNigeriashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, magical realism · same region & era
b. 1948Abdulrazak GurnahTanzania / UKshared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, historical fiction · same region & era
b. 1938Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'oKenyashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, magical realism · same region & era
1936–2015Assia DjebarAlgeriashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, historical fiction · same region & era
1939–2023Ayi Kwei ArmahGhanakindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, historical fiction · neighboring movements · same region & era
1942–2023Ama Ata AidooGhanakindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, satire · neighboring movements · same region & era