Zoe Wicomb's Books

Playing in the Light

A Novel

By: Zoe Wicomb

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From the acclaimed South African novelist, a lyrical tale of self-discovery in post-apartheid cape town. Set in a beautifully rendered 1990s Cape Town, Playing in the Light revolves around Marion, a woman of Afrikaner background, who hates traveling but nonetheless runs a travel agency, and her complex relationship with Brenda, the first black woman she has ever employed. In writing as finely detailed and attuned to psychological nuance as Anita Brookner's, Wicomb depicts the life of a complicated, single woman in a changing and complicated place. Caught up in the narrow world of private interests and self-advancement, Marion eschews national politics until the exposures of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission lead to the discovery of a skeleton in the family cupboard. While her aging father is unable and unwilling to supply the truth, Marion's young employee becomes implicated in the piecing together of Marion's past, leading to a defining transformation and widening of Marion's world. In this impeccably wrought new work, the acclaimed author of You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town provides wisdom and insight about the new South Africa and about people everywhere.

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Page Count

226

Publisher

New Press, The

Published Date

ISBN 10

1595580476

ISBN 13

9781595580474

October

A Novel

By: Zoe Wicomb

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October

A Novel

By: Zoe Wicomb

“Mercia Murray is a woman of fifty-two years who has been left.” Abandoned by her partner in Scotland, where she has been living for twenty-five years, Mercia returns to her homeland of South Africa to find her family overwhelmed by alcoholism and secrets. Poised between her life in Scotland and her life in South Africa, she recollects the past with a keen sense of irony as she searches for some idea of home. In Scotland, her life feels unfamiliar; her apartment sits empty. In South Africa, her only brother is a shell of his former self, pushing her away. And yet in both places she is needed, if only she could understand what for. Plumbing the emotional limbo of a woman who is isolated and torn from her roots, October is a stark and utterly compelling novel about the contemporary experience of an intelligent immigrant, adrift among her memories and facing an uncertain middle age. With this pitch-perfect story, the “writer of rare brilliance” (The Scotsman) Zoë Wicomb—who received one of the first Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes for lifetime achievement—stands to claim her rightful place as one of the preeminent contemporary voices in international fiction.

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Page Count

258

Publisher

New Press, The

Published Date

ISBN 10

1595589627

ISBN 13

9781595589620

Still Life

By: Zoe Wicomb

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Still Life

By: Zoe Wicomb

Few in his native Scotland know about Thomas Pringle – the abolitionist, publisher, and – some would say – Father of South African Poetry. A biography of Pringle is in order, and a reluctant writer takes up this task. To help tell the story of Pringle is the spectre of Mary Prince, a West Indian slave whose history he had once published. Also offering advice is the ghost of Hinza Marossi, Pringle’s adopted Khoesan son, and the timetraveller Sir Nicholas Greene, a character exhumed from the pages of a book. While Mary is breathing fire and Sir Nicholas’s heart is pining, Hinza is interrogating his origins. But what is to be made of the life of Pringle so many years after his death by this motley crew from the 1800s? As the apparitions flit through time and space to put together the pieces of Pringle’s story and find their own place in his biography, Zoë Wicomb’s novel offers an acerbic exploration of colonial history in superb prose and with piercing wit.

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Page Count

272

Publisher

Penguin Random House South Africa

Published Date

ISBN 10

1415210667

ISBN 13

9781415210666

You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

By: Zoë Wicomb

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You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

By: Zoë Wicomb

The South African novel of identity that "deserves a wide audience on a par with Nadine Gordimer.

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Page Count

241

Publisher

The Feminist Press at CUNY

Published Date

ISBN 10

1558619151

ISBN 13

9781558619159

Book's by Zoe Wicomb

Playing in the Light

Playing in the Light

October

October

Still Life

Still Life

You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

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