Ways of Dying

Ways of Dying
Author Zakes Mda[1]
Country South Africa
Language English
Genre Novel
Publisher Oxford University Press Southern Africa (South Africa) & Picador (United States)[2]
Publication date
 1995
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN 0-19-571498-9
OCLC 37694751

Ways of Dying is a 1995 novel by South African novelist and playwright Zakes Mda.[3] The text follows the wanderings and creative endeavors of Toloki, a self-employed professional mourner, as he traverses an unnamed South African city during the nation's transitional period.[4]

Plot Summary

Toloki, an itinerant professional mourner, contemplates the various forms of violence plaguing the shantytowns in which he works. He runs into Noria, whom he had known as a child from his home village, while mourning at her son Vutha's funeral, and the two move in together. They start a relationship, each claiming the other knows and can teach how to live. [5]

'Ways of Dying' examines the concepts of nation-building after the communal trauma of Apartheid,[6][7] the interplay of tragedy and laughter in confronting crisis,[8] and the conflicts between social classes and government authority.

References

  1. ↑ Rochman, Hazel (1 August 2002). "The Heart of Redness/Ways of Dying (book)". Booklist 98 (22): 1923.
  2. ↑ Austen, Benjamin (Feb 2005). "The Pen or the Gun". Harper's Magazine 310 (1857): 85–89.
  3. ↑ Lalami, Laila (11 December 2007). "Revenants". Nation (15).
  4. ↑ Zaleski, Jeff (8 December 2002). "Fiction Notes". Publishers Weekly 249 (32): 277.
  5. ↑ "Ways of Dying (Book)". Kirkus Reviews 70 (13): 909. 1 July 2002.
  6. ↑ Goyal, Yogita (Summer 2011). "The Pull of the Ancestors: Slavery, Apartheid, and Memory in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Cion". Research in African Literatures 42 (2): 147–169. doi:10.2979/reseafrilite.42.2.147.
  7. ↑ Lopez, Maria J. (May 2013). "Communities of Mourning and Vulnerability: Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow". English in Africa 40 (1): 99–117. doi:10.4314/eia.v40i1.5.
  8. ↑ Barnard, Rita (Summer 2004). "On Laughter, the Grotesque, and the South African Transition: Zades Mda's Ways of Dying". Novel: A Forum on Fiction 37 (3): 277–302. doi:10.1215/ddnov.037030277.


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