| The Whale Caller Contributor(s): Mda, Zakes (Author) |
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ISBN: 0312425872 ISBN-13: 9780312425876 Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL OUR PRICE: $17.10 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2006 Annotation: A romantic comedy of sorts--in which the changing face of post-apartheid South Africa is revealed through prodigious, lyrical storytelling--this novel follows two misfits who fall in love in a country where just living from one day to the next can be challenge enough. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Humorous - General |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.5" W x 8.4" (0.70 lbs) 240 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Southern Africa |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: As Zakes Mda's fifth novel opens, the seaside village of Hermanus is overrun with whale-watchers--foreign tourists determined to see whales in their natural habitat. But when the tourists have gone home, the whale caller lingers at the shoreline, wooing a whale he has named Sharisha with cries from a kelp horn. When Sharisha fails to appear for weeks on end, the whale caller frets like a jealous lover--oblivious to the fact that the town drunk, Saluni, a woman who wears a silk dress and red stiletto heels, is infatuated with him. The two misfits eventually fall in love. But each of them is ill equipped for romance, and their relationship suggests, in the words of The Washington Post, that the deeper, darker concern here is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart. |
Contributor Bio(s): Mda, Zakes: - Zakes Mda is a professor of creative writing at Ohio University. He has been a visiting professor at both Yale and the University of Vermont. Among his novels, The Heart of Redness (FSG, 2002) won the Richard Wright Zora Neale Hurston Legacy Award. He lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Athens, Ohio. |