Siphiwe Ndlovu weaves the threads of a complex colonial history into the present through people ‘half-broken’ by the stigmas of race and mental illness, all the while balancing the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire in a hypnotic, haunting account of love and magic.
‘The Creation of Half-Broken People’ is the extraordinary tale of a nameless woman plagued by visions.
She works for the Good Foundation and its museum, filled with artefacts from the family’s exploits in Africa.
The Good family members are all descendants of captain John Good of King Solomon’s Mines fame.
Our heroine is happy with her association with the Good family, until one day she comes across a group of protesters outside the museum.
Instigating the group is an ancient woman, who our heroine knows is not real. She knows too that the secrets of her past have returned.
After this encounter, the nameless woman finds herself living first in an attic and then in a haunted castle, her life anything but normal as her own intangible inheritance unfolds through the women who inhabit her visions.
Showcasing African gothic at its finest, this hypnotic novel tangles together classic texts of madness and female rebellion alongside elements of the jingoistic novels of Victorian adventurer H Rider Haggard.
The result is an extraordinary reinvention of colonial and patriarchal perspectives.
The unnamed narrator spins a web back through a century of colonial possession – political, spiritual and mental – to imagine the stories of conquest and captivity, control and disruption, from the perspective of the women and men ‘half-broken’ by various stigmas.
Equally ‘half-broken’ are those dehumanised by their insane greed for dominion and treasure.
With trademark compassion and complexity, Ndlovu balances the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire, making for a spellbinding and literally haunting account of love and magic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ndlovu is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University, as well as master’s degrees in African studies and film.
She has published research on Saartjie Baartman, and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film ‘Graffiti’.
Ndlovu is also the author of the bestselling ‘The Theory of Flight’, winner of the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and currently a school set work in South Africa, its follow-up, ‘The History of Man’, and ‘The Quality of Mercy’.
Her work is published in South Africa and the United States, and can also be read in Arabic and Italian translations.
She is a winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell Prize.
Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, she currently lives and works in Johannesburg.
– booklounge.co.za; panmacmillan.co.za; penguinrandomhouse.co.za; lennonliterary.com
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