Publications
We asked 20 South African or SA-based authors who published a book in the course of 2022 to tell us about their favourite reads of the year.
1. Futhi Ntshingila, author of They Got To You Too (Picador)
An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omotoso is one of my favourite reads for this year. The theme of grieving a loss was deeply personal to me. The plot thickens in surprising ways but it drew me in deep into the discoveries of Mosijola, a mother who is searching for answers regarding the death of Yinka, her daughter, and discovering the most intimate parts of herself. It is written with such tenderness that even things that society finds taboo are read with minimal judgment. One almost feels privileged to be an ear and the eye on the lives of humans living in a harsh world, hiding their desires and playing them out in the darkness of the night and in dungeons only known to a trusted few. The characters are full, surprising and disruptive of the constructed narrative of what an African woman should be or how a marriage of intellectuals should be. An Unusual Grief is beautiful, sensual and deeply sad.
