October (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781595589620)

A South African academic returns to her homeland in this novel by the award-winning author of You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town--"an extraordinary writer" (Toni Morrison).

Winner of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, Zo Wicomb is an essential voice of the South African diaspora, hailed by fellow writers--such as Toni Morrison and J. M. Coetzee, among others--and by reviewers as "a writer of rare brilliance" (The Scotsman).

In October, Wicomb tells the story of Mercia Murray, a South African woman of color in the midst of a difficult homecoming. Abandoned by her partner in Scotland, where she has been living for twenty-six years, Mercia returns to South Africa to find her family overwhelmed by alcoholism and buried secrets. Poised between her new life in Scotland and her South African roots, Mercia recollects the past and assesses the present with a keen sense of irony. October is a stark and utterly compelling novel about the contemporary experience of a woman caught between cultures, adrift in middle age with her memories and an uncertain future.

Author: Zoe Wicomb
ISBN-10: 1595589627
ISBN-13: 9781595589620
Publisher: New Press
Language: English
Published: 03/04/2014
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/25/2013
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2014
Library Journal 01/01/2014 pg. 104
New Yorker (The) 05/05/2014 pg. 75