October 9798893851106 Paperback

A South African academic returns to her homeland where she tries to connect her past and the present in this novel by the extraordinary (Toni Morrison) award-winning author ofYou Cant Get Lost in Cape TownInOctober, acclaimed fiction writer Zo 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.Octoberis 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.Winner of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, Zo Wicomb is an essential voice of the South African diaspora, hailed by fellow writerssuch as Toni Morrison and J. M. Coetzeeand by reviewers as a writer of rare brilliance (The Scotsman).