UMLUNGU OMNYAMA

257pp., paperback, First isiZulu Edition, Jacana, Johannesburg, 2026

ISBN: 9781431436897

First published in 2007 in English as Coconut. Translated into isiZulu by Celimpilo Dladla.

Kopano Matlwa's first novel is set in post-apartheid South Africa. Two young women who have grown up black in white suburbia struggle to find their identities.

Kopano Matlwa won the 2006/2007 European Union Award for Coconut, and subsequently jointly won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2010. Her successive novels are Spilt Milk , Period Pain and Bosadi. Matlwa, who has a Master’s in Global Health Science and a doctorate in Population Health from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, works as a public health physician in Johannesburg.