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.
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.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Apr 8, 2025 |
| Specifications | 384 pages | 6 in x 9 in |
| Keywords | Zimbabwe; Chrysalis; Anuja Varghese; When We Were Birds; Ayanna Lloyd Banwo; Wide Sargasso Sea; Jean Rhys; Michelle Cliff; Who Will Bury You?; Chido Muchemwa; Picador Africa; Creepy; Ghosts; Creepy Castle; Rebecca; Daphne Du Maurier; Clue; Halloween; Halloween Reads; Spooky Reads; |
| Written By |
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. |
| Written By |
|
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. |
“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
” —"This is a writer who should make everyone sit up. Unusually in her generation, she has an acute sense of both history and the future, mixing attention to the regrettable effect of colonialism on African sensibility, and the narratives it has produced, with exciting formal approaches that open a way to making it all new. And, let’s hope, better!" — Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland
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