The Madonna of Excelsior / Zakes Mda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mda, Zakes.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Apartheid--Fiction.

Apartheid.

Group identity.

Rape victims--Fiction.

Rape victims.

South Africa--Fiction.

South Africa.

Group identity--Fiction.

Mother and child--Fiction.

Mother and child.

Multiracial children--Fiction.

Multiracial children.

Domestic fiction.

Genre:

Fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Belletristische Darstellung.

Historical fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

258 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Picador edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Picador, 2005.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Originally published: Cape Town : Oxford University Press, 2002.

ISBN:

0312423829

9780312423827

OCLC:

58470254

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description