Ways of Dying
Zakes MdaWinner of the M-Net Book Prize
Shortlisted for the CNA and Noma Awards
In Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda's acclaimed first novel, Toloki is a "professional mourner" in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa. Day after day he attends funerals in the townships, dressed with dignity in a threadbare suit, cape, and battered top hat, to comfort the grieving families of the victims of the city's crime, racial hatred, and crippling poverty. At a Christmas day funeral for a young boy Toloki is reunited with Noria, a woman from his village. Together they help each other to heal the past, and as their story interweaves with those of their acquaintances this elegant short novel provides a magical and painful picture of South Africa today.
Ways of Dying was awarded South Africa's prestigious M-Net Book Prize, awarded by the TV channel M-Net to books written in one of South Africa's official languages, and was shortlisted for the Central News Agency (CNA) Award and the Noma Award, an Africa-wide prize founded by Shoichi Noma, onetime president of Kodansha International.
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 08/01/2002
ISBN: 9780312420918
Pages: 216
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.90d
Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2002 pg. 909
PW Notes and Reprints 08/12/2002 pg. 277
Booklist 08/01/2002 pg. 1923
New York Times 08/11/2002 pg. 9
New York Review of Books 01/16/2003 pg. 29
Qbr the Black Book Review 03/01/2003 pg. 7
Multicultural Review 03/01/2003 pg. 64
Publishers Weekly 08/12/2002