Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Jan 10, 2025 | litnet.co.za | Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Mphuthumi Ntabeni writes a regular book column for LitNet. ........ It is a short, easy-to-read novel that ticks almost all the boxes for a commercial novel, with quality writing of literary fiction. ........ It is always such a pleasure to encounter a bold, new voice in literature, especially when it is the first novel you read at the beginning of the year after what you could describe as a year of fiction slump.

Dec 10, 2024 | litnet.co.za | Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Title: The equality of shadowsAuthor: Charl-Pierre NaudéPublisher: Pan Macmillan (2024)ISBN: 9781770109124The equality of shadows looks at the disintegration of the apartheid consciousness in the ’70s through the lives of several denizens of a small town in the Karoo. It is told, almost as hallucinatory, by a small-town reporter. Eventually, a symphony of interviews by those who were at the centre of the appearance and disappearance of a strange building in the dorpie emerges.

Nov 13, 2024 | litnet.co.za | Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi and I, as writers who hail from the Eastern Cape, have had the dream of reckoning with the literary history of the Eastern Cape for as long as we have known each other. When, last year, there were celebrations of 200 years of Xhosa in the written word, we thought it an opportune moment to put the idea into action. The Gompo Book and Cultural Festival to be held in East London on 21 to 23 March 2025 is the tentative first step towards accomplishing this goal.

Sep 18, 2024 | litnet.co.za | Mphuthumi Ntabeni

PenAfrican is Mphuthumi Ntabeni's regular column for LitNet. Title: Vagabonds! Author: Mphuthumi NtabeniPublisher: Riverhead BooksISBN: 9780593330029This book is blurbed as a story about God, faith and queerness, among other topics. To get a complete and more precise picture, you must add the subplot riffs on African mythology, superstitions, modern love relationships and complex city lives – in the Nigerian city of Lagos, which the locals call Èkó, in particular.

Aug 23, 2024 | litnet.co.za | Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Title: JamesAuthor: Percival EverettPublisher: Pan MacmillanISBN: 9781035031245Ernest Hemingway once said that all American literature comes from one book, The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Percival Everett, in his Booker Prize 2024 longlist interview, says of his book, James: “Mark Twain’s The adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the source of my novel. I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not and also could not have written.