Zakes Mda

The Whale Caller is living a quiet life in his bungalow on South Africa''s Cape, spending his days calling to the whales out to sea, eating macaroni cheese each night. His life is peaceful is a little eccentric, until a drunken woman in stilettos who has been following him about for weeks, finally manages to invade his life for good. Together they form a strange and intense love affair, brimming with alcohol and jealousy, which threatens to destroy them both. Beautifully written, witty and magical, Zakes Mda creates a world that is at once enchanting and very real.

It is 1903. A lame and frail Malangana - Little Suns - searches for his beloved Mthwakazi after many lonely years spent in Lesotho. Mthwakazi was the young woman he had fallen in love with twenty years earlier, before the assassination of Hamilton Hope ripped the two of them apart. Intertwined with Malanganas story, is the account of Hope - a colonial magistrate who, in the late nineteenth century, was undermining the local kingdoms of the eastern Cape in order to bring them under the control of the British. It was he who wanted to coerce Malanganas king and his people, the amaMpondomise, into joining his battle - a scheme Malanganas conscience could not allow. Zakes Mdas fine novel Little Suns weaves the true events surrounding the death of Magistrate Hope into a touching story of love and perseverance that can transcend exile and strife.

En la Sudáfrica del apartheid, Toloki, un vagabundo estrafalario yenternecedor, con su sombrero de copa y su traje carnavalesco, vade funeral en funeral ofreciendo sus servicios de plañidero a cambio deunas pocas monedas. Noria, en cambio, es una mujer bella, fuerte ygenerosa, que se ha convertido en el simbolo de la resistencia de lasmujeres tras años de miseria marcados por la tragedia de perder a susdos hijos. Su reencuentro en la ciudad y el relato de sus terribles vivenciasvan transformandolos y poco a poco el amor hace su aparicion.