LOVE, a novel

186pp., paperback, Jacana, Johannesburg, 2026

ISBN: 9781431436460

Blending crime, romance, and speculative fiction, this novel examines the beautiful and often malignant dimensions of love, to ask whether salvation lies at the altar of the divine, in overcoming the weaknesses of our lesser selves, or in our brief moments of romantic ecstasy.

Sebastian Salt is an undecided atheist – four times married, four times divorced, four times widowed, four times prostituted, and four times arrested. Love is his biographical voyage.

Nthikeng Mohlele grew up in Limpopo Province and Tembisa Township. He is the author of the novels Revolutionaries' House, Breasts, etc, The Scent of Bliss, Small Things, Rusty Bell, Michael K, Illumination and Pleasure (winner of the 2016 University of Johannesburg Main Prize for South African Writing in English and the 2017 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Prize). He has also published two collections of short stories, A Little Light and The Discovery of Love (winner of the 2022 National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Best Fiction: Short Stories). His plays include I Am a Woman and The Affairs of State. He lives in Johannesburg.