A generous patient wry and intelligent voice...[that] suggests not just a writer who can
seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor. We also encounter a writer who has
the power to shock and frighten us to astound and anger and unsettle us...In short his is a
voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration. --Neil Gordon New York
Times Book Review Selection Summer Reading New York Times Book Review In 1971 nineteen
citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking
apartheid's Immorality Act which forbade sex between blacks and whites. Taking this case as
raw material for his alchemic imagination Zakes Mda tells the story of one irrepressible
fallen madonna Niki and her family at the heart of the scandal.
