Bøger af Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Across countries and decades, The Wanderers weaves a captivating tapestry of human lives, exploring the enduring—and sometimes contradictory—duties of blood and country. Ruru’s father, a South African freedom fighter, was exiled to Tanzania before she was born, leaving Ruru and her mother to fend for themselves in the township they called home. So when a fatal bus accident claims her mother’s life, Ruru is adrift. Haunted by her mother’s absence, another loss sits heavy on Ruru’s heart: that of her father, who never returned to the family, or country, he claimed to love. When she learns of his passing, Ruru grieves for the man she never knew, and the answers she would never find. She seeks solace in Tanzania, where she strikes up an unlikely friendship with her father’s widow, a Rwandan refugee named Efuoa. Efuoa gifts Ruru her father’s journals, and as she reads, she begins to piece together the fragments of a complicated life.

The Broken River Tent is a novel that marries imagination with history. It is about the life and times of Maqoma, the Xhosa chief who was at the forefront of fighting British colonialism in the Eastern Cape during the nineteenth century. The story is told through the eyes of a young South African, Phila, who suffers from what he calls triple "N" condition--neurasthenia, narcolepsy, and cultural ne plus ultra. This gives him access to the analeptic memory of his people.After being under immense mental pressure, he crosses the mental divide between the living and the dead and is visited by Maqoma. They engage in different conversations about cultural history, literature, religion, the past, and contemporary South African life.The Broken River Tent was the University of Johannesburg Debut Novel Prize winner in 2019 and was longlisted for the 2019 Sunday Times Literature Prize for Fiction.