W IS FOR WITNESS

145pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2023

"Lazar has imagined a quirky, animated world into existence. Mobilising a narrative relay team of articulate objects and animals - and the occasional human - she brings a new fictional version of Johannesburg, and especially Linden, to life. A worldly-wise hadeda, providing a bird's-eye view and threading everything together, steals the show." Ivan Vladislavič, author and Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, Wits University

"I read this wonderful contemporary satire with increasing glee. The writing is witty, the literary playfulness deft, the exhortation to look and listen, constant. The narrative team's depiction is infectiously exuberant, whilst the failures of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood in which the story and its keyword unfold, are painfully familiar. This unique tale makes possible a spirited but sceptical claim: she who is tired of Linden is tired of life." Michael Titlestad, Professor of English, Wits University 

Karen Lazar is a poet, writing coach and an English lecturer at St Augustine College. She is an active advocate for gender and disability rights, and is the author of Hemispheres: inside a stroke. W is for Witness is her debut novel. She lives in Johannesburg.