Search for your favourite author or book

The Theory of Flight

ISBN 
9781415209424
Format 
Paperback
Recommended Price 
R340.00
Published 
August 2018
About the book: 
‘On the third of September, not so long ago, something truly wondrous happened on the Beauford Farm and Estate. At the moment of her death, Imogen Zula Nyoni – Genie – was seen to fly away on a giant pair of silver wings ...’
 
Said to have hatched from a golden egg, Genie spends her childhood playing in a field of sunflowers as her country reawakens after a fierce civil war.
 
But Genie’s story stretches back much further: it tells of her grandfather, who quenched his wanderlust by walking into the Indian Ocean, and of her father, who spent countless hours building model aeroplanes to catch up with him. It is the tale of her mother, a singer self-styled after Dolly Parton with a dream of travelling to Nashville, and of her grandmother, who did everything in her power to raise her children to have character.
 
With the lightest of touches, a cast of unforgettable characters, and moments of surreal beauty, The Theory of Flight  sketches decades of history in this unnamed Southern African nation. It does not dwell on what has been lost in its war, but on the daily triumphs of its people, the necessity of art, and the power of its visionaries to take flight.
 
Read an extract from The Theory of Flight.
Other titles by this author 
About the Author

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of the bestselling novel  The Theory of Flight,  winner of the 2019  Sunday Times  Fiction Prize and currently a school set work, and its follow-up,  The History of Man.  A winner of Yale University’s 2022  Windham Campbell  Prize, she is a writer, filmmaker, and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film from Ohio University. She has published research on  Saartjie Baartman  and she wrote, directed, and edited the award-winning short film  Graffiti.  She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Photograph © Nokuthula Sarah Ndhlovu

Others also viewed

This masterpiece of a novel, narrated in a single sentence, is an international literary sensation...
The Land Is Ours  tells the story of South Africa’s first black lawyers, who operated...
Sunday Times  Top Ten bestseller! All over the country, there are words disappearing from...
Jack Reacher takes an aimless stroll past a pawn shop in a small Midwestern town. In the window he...