Rhodes University Unit
for the Humanities (UHURU) is pleased to announce that Mandla Langa’s acclaimed
new novel, The Texture of Shadows, will be launched in Grahamstown at Barrett
Lecture Theatre 1 at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday 5th of March.
Mandla Langa will be
introduced by Mwelela Cele from the Steve Biko Centre and Siphokazi Magadla
from the Rhodes Politics Department will be the discussant.
It is 1989, a high point
of hope in South Africa’s political history. The nation is abuzz with rumours
of Nelson Mandela’s imminent release, the dismantling of guerrilla camps and
the possibility of peace.
A band of exiled People’s
Army soldiers returns to South Africa. After years in Angola they think the
change they have been fighting for is finally about to become a reality. They
have been ordered to carry and deliver a sealed trunk to an unspecified
destination. It is a mission that makes them a target as different parties set
out to separate the men from the trunk and its mysterious contents, setting the
stage for several fierce conflicts.
The Texture of Shadows
explores a world of hardened guerrilla fighters, corrupt police officers,
ex-political prisoners and the victims of abuse of a system of bannings and
beatings. But there are also cracks in this steel-edged world that hope, love
and beauty can fill as the reader is swept up in the story of Chaplain Nerissa
Rodrigues and her fellow soldiers.
‘The Texture of Shadows
is an astonishingly brave book. It strips the South African freedom struggle of
the usual sentimental pieties and pares it down to bare essentials: love, lies
and lost illusions.’ – CHRISTOPHER HOPE, author of Shooting Angels, Kruger’s
Alp and White Boy Running.
