- **From the Dublin Literary Award and Women's Prize for Fiction
longlisted author of The Woman Next Door and An Unusual Grief
** - Winner of the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize
- Shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature
- Featured in the New York Times' "Globetrotting" sneak preview of
books coming out in 2019 from around the world
- One of "Seven new and noteworthy fiction titles about South Africa"
The Globe and Mail
Wandering in Cape Town, Leke stalks people, steals small objects, and
visits doctors and healers in search of a cure. But he isn't sure what
ails him--loneliness, or the family curse.
Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and
failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled
young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly
destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and
visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of
letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has
never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father
had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Leke's search to break the curse
leads him to strange places.
Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing
from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel Bom Boy was
published in South Africa by Modjaji Books in 2011 and was shortlisted
for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Woman Next Door (Chatto
and Windus, 2016), Omotoso's second novel, was published to critical
acclaim. She lives in Johannesburg.
