Call and Response

Dancing between the rural village of Serowe and the thrumming city of Gaborone, these nine sparkling stories trace the lives of women navigating the competing pulls of tradition and modernity, love and loss, family and independence.

We meet a young widow who has worn the same mourning clothes for almost a year, and a teenage girl who shies away from the room where her once vibrant aunt lies dying. Elsewhere, a younger sister watches on as her brother flaunts his infidelities, and a traveller returns home laden with confusion and shame.

For fans of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri, Gothataone Moeng’s first collection – suffused with beauty and humour – captures the voices of a country in flux, and the strength of women caught up in a clash between ancestral expectations and imported dreams.