Evening Primrose

by Kopano Matlwa

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Pub Date Apr 03 2018 | Archive Date Jan 29 2018

Description

A powerfully insightful novel from one of the foremost voices of South Africa's "Born Free" generation, Evening Primrose explores issues of race, gender, and the medical profession with tenderness and urgency.
"Matlwa's voice is one we need." --Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
"Matlwa is South Africa's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie." --Rosie Rowell, The Bookseller
"Written in delicate prose recalling Zinzi Clemmons's What We Lose, this raw, honest work draws readers into Masechaba's South African world." --Library Journal (Starred Review)
When Masechaba finally achieves her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, her ambition is tested as she faces the stark reality of South Africa's public health-care system.

As she leaves her deeply religious mother and makes friends with the politically-minded Nyasha, Masechaba's eyes are opened to the rising xenophobic tension that carries echoes of apartheid.

Battling her inner demons, she must decide if she should take a stand to help her best friend, even if it comes at a high personal cost.

Advance Praise

"Tackles more than many books twice its length. Masechaba addresses her diaries to God. And because God knows all, she hides nothing. The pages are raw. This is the best kind of political novel, one where the author allows her characters a full and complicated humanity. Evening Primose's turns of emotion are virtuosic. The novel dances from satire to slapstick to stabbing pain to tentative hope. Matlwa's voice is one we need."
--- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

"Matlwa is South Africa's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"
--- Rosie Rowell, The Bookseller

"A heart-wrenching look at South African society through the eyes of a doctor"
--- Grazia

Marketing Plan

In 2016, Kopano Matlwa was selected as one of 21 icons of South Africa project, celebrating the country's young game changers
Draws on Matlwa's personal experience as a medical graduate in South Africa, MSc in Global Health Science, and is currently studying for her doctorate in Population Health at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar
Her debut novel, Coconut won the European Union Literary Award, her second novel, Spilt Milk won the Wole Soyinka Prize in Literature in 2010.
For fans of Eileen, Ruby, Homegoing, and The Bricks that Built the Houses.

In 2016, Kopano Matlwa was selected as one of 21 icons of South Africa project, celebrating the country's young game changers
Draws on Matlwa's personal experience as a medical graduate in South...