View source for Ways of Dying

{{short description|Book by Zakes Mda}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
| name         = Ways of Dying
| title_orig   = 
| translator   = 
| image        = Ways of Dying.jpg<!--  Commented out because image was deleted: [[Image:WaysOfDying.jpg|200px]] --><!--prefer 1st edition-->
| caption = 
| author       = [[Zakes Mda]]<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Rochman|first1=Hazel|title=The Heart of Redness/Ways of Dying (book)|journal=Booklist|date=1 August 2002|volume=98|issue=22|page=1923}}</ref>
| cover_artist = 
| country      = [[South Africa]]
| language     = [[English language|English]]
| series       = 
| genre        = [[Novel]]
| publisher    = [[Oxford University Press]] Southern Africa (South Africa) & [[Picador (imprint)|Picador]] (United States)<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Austen|first1=Benjamin|title=The Pen or the Gun|journal=Harper's Magazine|date=Feb 2005|volume=310|issue=1857|pages=85–89}}</ref>
| release_date = 1995
| media_type   = Print ([[Hardcover|Hardback]] & [[Paperback]])
| pages        = 
| isbn         = 0-19-571498-9
| oclc= 37694751
}}

'''''Ways of Dying''''' is a 1995 novel by [[South Africa]]n novelist and playwright [[Zakes Mda]].<ref>{{cite news|last1=Lalami|first1=Laila|title=Revenants|work=Nation|issue=15|date=11 December 2007}}</ref>  The text follows the wanderings and creative endeavors of Toloki, a self-employed [[Professional mourners|professional mourner]], as he traverses an unnamed South African city during [[History of South Africa (1948 to 1994)#Final years of apartheid|the nation's transitional period]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Zaleski|first1=Jeff|title=Fiction Notes|journal=Publishers Weekly|date=8 December 2002|volume=249|issue=32|page=277}}</ref>

''Ways of Dying'' examines the concepts of nation-building after the communal trauma of [[Apartheid]]. It is an examination of the interregnum period in South African history. Mda experiments with [[magic realism|magical realism]],<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Goyal|first1=Yogita|title=The Pull of the Ancestors: Slavery, Apartheid, and Memory in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Cion|journal=Research in African Literatures|date=Summer 2011|volume=42|issue=2|pages=147–169|doi=10.2979/reseafrilite.42.2.147}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lopez|first1=Maria J.|title=Communities of Mourning and Vulnerability: Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow|journal=English in Africa|date=May 2013|volume=40|issue=1|pages=99–117|doi=10.4314/eia.v40i1.5}}</ref> using it to highlight the interplay of tragedy and laughter in confronting crisis,<ref name=barnard>{{cite journal|last1=Barnard|first1=Rita|title=On Laughter, the Grotesque, and the South African Transition: Zades Mda's Ways of Dying|journal=Novel: A Forum on Fiction|date=Summer 2004|volume=37|issue=3|pages=277–302|doi=10.1215/ddnov.037030277}}</ref> and the conflicts between social classes and government authority.

==Plot==
The novel takes place in an unnamed South African city, five years after the first elections to occur after Apartheid. Toloki, an itinerant professional mourner, contemplates the various forms of violence plaguing the shantytowns in which he works. He runs into Noria, whom he had known as a child from his home village, while mourning at her son Vutha's funeral, the second funeral she has had for a child. The two move in together and start a relationship, each claiming the other knows and can teach how to live.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Ways of Dying (Book)|journal=Kirkus Reviews|date=1 July 2002|volume=70|issue=13|page=909}}</ref>

==Criticism==
Grant Farred, writing in ''[[Modern Fiction Studies]]'', criticized Mda for his implicit condemnation of the historical, violent tactics used to resist Apartheid.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Farred|first=Grant|date=Spring 2000|title=Mourning the Postapartheid State Already? The Poetics of Loss in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying|journal=Modern Fiction Studies|volume=46|issue=1}}</ref> Farred characterizes this lack of sympathy with historical actors as typical of Post-Apartheid viewpoints. Alternatively, Rita Barnard praised the book for what she believed to be an "optimistic" tone, stating that it did not "offer a ratification of received codes of conduct".<ref name=barnard/> Further, she praised the novel's lightness, and its willingness to replace a "sober militancy with gaiety and laughter".<ref name=barnard/>

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

[[Category:1995 novels]]
[[Category:20th-century South African novels]]
[[Category:Novels set in South Africa]]
[[Category:1995 debut novels]]


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