Retrato do autor

Zakes Mda

Autor(a) de The Heart of Redness

28 Works 1,099 Membros 23 Críticas 2 Favorited

About the Author

Born Zakes Mda in 1948 in South Africa in the Eastern Cape, Mda spent his early childhood in Soweto, and finished his school education in Lesotho, where he had joined his father in exile. As a poet, he published in magazines such as Staffrider, The Voice, and Oduma, and in the anthologies New South mostrar mais African Writing in 1977, Summer Fires in 1982 and Soho Square in 1992. His first volume of poems, Bits of Debris, came out in 1986. In 1978 Mda's play We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, written in 1973, won the first Amstel Playwright of the Year Award. The following year he won this award again with The Hill, a play written in 1978. The publication of We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and Other Plays in 1980 enabled him to gain admission to Ohio University for a three-year Master's degree in theatre. His play The Road, written in 1982, won the Christina Crawford Award of American Theatre Association in 1984, by which time his plays were being performed in the USSR, the USA, and Scotland as well as in various parts of southern Africa. Mda returned from the USA in 1984, joining the University of Lesotho as lecturer in the Department of English in 1985. In 1989 he was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Cape Town and his dissertation was later published as When People Play People in 1993, the same year as a collection of four plays, And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses. In 1991 Mda was writer-in-residence at the University of Durham, where he wrote The Nun's Romantic Story; in 1992 as research fellow at Yale University he wrote The Dying Screams of the Moon, another play, and his first novel, Ways of Dying in 1995. By 1994 he was back in South Africa from exile in America, as visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. He has since given up teaching African literature to write novels. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Inclui os nomes: Z. Mda, Zakes Mda

Séries

Obras por Zakes Mda

The Heart of Redness (2000) 347 exemplares
Ways of Dying (1995) 225 exemplares
The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) 147 exemplares
The Whale Caller (2005) 123 exemplares
Cion (2003) 71 exemplares
She Plays with the Darkness (1999) 40 exemplares
Black Diamond (2009) 27 exemplares
Rachel's Blue (2014) 16 exemplares
The Sculptors of Mapungubwe (2013) 14 exemplares
Little Suns (2015) 11 exemplares
The Zulus of New York (2020) 8 exemplares
The Zulus of New York (2019) 2 exemplares
Four Plays (1996) 1 exemplar
Our Lady of Benoni (2012) 1 exemplar
The Plays of Zakes Mda (1990) 1 exemplar
Bits of Debris 1 exemplar
Dzidirama Dza (2002) 1 exemplar
Wayfarers' hymns (2021) 1 exemplar
La Madone d'Excelsior (2004) 1 exemplar
Kizilligin Kalbi 1 exemplar

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

32/2021. This is a novel set in an unnamed city on the coast of South Africa, presumably based on Cape Town, in 1993-4, shortly before the transition to inclusive democracy. The protagonist is a professional mourner who meets a woman from his home village at the funeral of her son in the city about twenty years after he last saw her. Unusually the story has a third person plural narrator, a collective "we", the people of the city and the village who have individually witnessed events but are recounting them from a communal perspective (I think this is a nod towards collective oral traditions of narrative and also omniscient ancestors). Most published fiction of around 200 pages is stripped to essentials but this novel is full of the telling small details of ordinary people's lives.

The usual "ways of dying" for each age group - accidents, violence, and illness - occur as natural events in various characters' lives. The average age of death in South Africa was falling from a high of 63 in 1991 to only 53 in 2004 (the lowest since 1972, although by 2020 it had returned to 64) but people continue on with daily life: they grow up, go to school, work, form relationships, have children, and care for families. The story ought to be depressing but, despite being confronted with the inevitability of all our demises, I found it life-affirming. After all, each day means more when we understand we have so little time on this earth, and the saddest way of dying is giving up on life while you're still alive.

Those who profit from death: professional mourners, authors who make art about death, those who make money out of the business of death, and politicians.

Quotes

Sorry, but I collect tripe quotations: "The Archbishop earned his living during the week by selling tripe and other innards of animals in a trunk fastened to the carrier of his bicycle. He rode from one homestead to another through the village, shouting, 'Mala mogodu! Amathumbo!' in his godly baritone. This simply meant that he was touting his offal, encouraging people to buy."

Audiences on art: "As usual, they cannot say what the meaning is. It is not even necessary to say, or even to know, what the meaning is. It is enough only to know that there is a meaning, and it is a profound one."
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
spiralsheep | 2 outras críticas | Feb 16, 2021 |
The style is very unusual and I really enjoy it. The voice speaking changes, there is a magical and unreal quality at times, then the reality comes in. Beautifully written and very evocative.
 
Assinalado
amyem58 | 2 outras críticas | Aug 10, 2020 |

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Rudy Gutierrez Cover artist

Estatísticas

Obras
28
Membros
1,099
Popularidade
#23,377
Avaliação
½ 3.5
Críticas
23
ISBN
87
Línguas
9
Marcado como favorito
2

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