SMALL THINGS

151pp., paperback, Reprint, Johannesburg, (2013) 2021

A novel about a man living on the streets of Johannesburg with a trumpet and a stray dog for company, and his obsessive love for the elusive Desiree.

"He can make words bleed, but he can also make them laugh and sing." Fred Khumalo, author of The Longest March

"Behind this story of love, music and the eternal quest, lies an artistic sensibility as generous as it is complex. The prose is rich in texture, the final effect melancholy and comic in equal proportions." J.M.Coetzee

"... an exhilarating mix of brutal wit, stinging irony, x-ray observational skills, slick sex, a memory like a computer and a profound penetrating philosophy." Antjie Krog, author of Country of My Skull

Nthikeng Mohlele lives and works in Johannesburg. He is the author of the novels The Scent of Bliss, Rusty Bell, Pleasure and Michael K. Pleasure won the 2016 University of Johannesburg Main Prize for South African Writing in English and the 2017 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Prize.