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A Novel
by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Stupendous African Gothic, by the winner of Yale University's Windham–Campbell Prize.
Showcasing African Gothic at its finest, 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 artifacts from the family's exploits in Africa, the Good family members all being 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 protestors 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.
With a knowing nod to classics of the Gothic genre, Siphiwe Gloria 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.
"Ndlovu sustains a vivid gothic style while providing unflinching commentary on the abuses of British colonialism. This is a revelation." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An extraordinary reinvention of colonial and patriarchal perspectives…Ndlovu balances the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire, making for a spellbinding and literally haunting account of love and magic." ―The Namibian
"Ndlovu richly deserves her place in the African pantheon of storytellers. This is a spectacular work of research and an intimate tale about the corrosive effects of colonialism and conquest." ―Rémy Ngamije, author of The Eternal Audience of One and Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space
This information about The Creation of Half-Broken People was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean writer, scholar, and filmmaker. She is a 2022 recipient of the Windham–Campbell Prize for Fiction. Her debut novel, The Theory of Flight, won the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize in 2019. Her second and third novels, The History of Man and The Quality of Mercy, were shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. After almost two decades of living in North America, Ndlovu has returned home to Bulawayo, the City of Kings.
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