MOTHER/LAND

228pp., paperback, Catalyst Press, Texas, 2026 

ISBN: 9781960803528

A novel set between New York and Cape Town across eras spanning apartheid’s forced removals and the rise of Black Lives Matter.

Salim, a Law Professor, struggles to come to terms with the discovery that his birth was the product of his mother’s illicit affair with a white politician in 1960s South Africa, that he has a half-sister, Bertha, that their brother is dying of cancer and that his bone marrow may be the only hope of saving him.

"In this riveting novel, Faraaz Mahomed brings alive the emotional complexities of South Africa’s apartheid past and their ongoing legacies. He is a richly gifted writer; Mother/Land is an urgent and important book.” Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children

"North/Global South, Developed World/Developing World, First World/Third World – the linkages we try to erase and not acknowledge are always already there. Faraaz Mahomed's insightful novel shows us that injustice anywhere is deeply connected to injustices everywhere. This is an important story about the entangled nature of history.” Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author of The Theory of Flight

Faraaz Mahomed is a researcher in the field of mental health and human rights, based between New York and his native South Africa. His short stories and travel writing have appeared in Granta, Boston Review, The Georgia Review, the Sunday Times, and other publications. In 2016, he won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the African Region with his story “The Pigeon.“