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Zakes Mda

Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, a South African novelist, poet and playwright. He was born in Herschel, South Africa in 1948, and after studying and working in South Africa, Lesotho and the United Kingdom, is now a professor in the English Department at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

His first novel, Ways of Dying takes place during the transitional years that marked South Africa's transformation into a democratic nation. It follows the character of Toloki, a man who, after finding himself destitiute, invents his own profession as a "Professional Mourner." He traverses the violent urban landscape of an unnamed South African city, finding an old love amidst the internecine fighting present in the townships and squatter settlements.

List of works by author

(1977) New South African Writing
(1979) We Shall Sing for the Fatherland
(1979) Dead End
(1979) Dark Voices Ring
(1980) The Hill
(1982) Banned: A Play for Radio
(1982) Summer Fires
(1986) Bits of Debris: The Poetry of Zakes Mda
(1988) And the Girls in their Sunday Dresses
(1989) Joys of War
(1990) The Plays of Zakes Mda
(1991) The Nun's Romantic Story
(1992) Soho Square
(1993) When People Play People
(1993) And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses: Four Works
(1995) Ways of Dying
(1995) She Plays with the Darkness
(1998) Melville 67
(2000) The Heart of Redness
(2002) The Madonna of Excelsior
(2002) Fools, Bells and the Importance of Eating: Three Satires
(2005) The Whale Caller

Awards

1978 - We Shall sing for the Fatherland received a special merit award in the first Amstel Playwright of the Year Award
1979 - The Hill won an Amstel Playwright of the Year Award
1997 - Ways of Dying won the M-Net Book Prize
2001 - The Heart of Redness won the Commonwealth Writers Prize: Africa and the Sunday Times Fiction Award