THE CRY OF WINNIE MANDELA, a novel

296 pp., paperback, Revised Edition, Johannesburg, (2003) 2013

This revised edition of Njabulo Ndebele's novel, first released in 2003, includes an introduction by the author as well as articles on the novel by Dorothy Driver, Antjie Krog, David Medalie, and Sam Raditlhalo.

"Its subject is the 'women who waited', hundreds of thousands of South Africans separated interminably from their men by the migrant labour system, political exile, activism and imprisonment, or by their partners' fecklessness. This "absence without duration" is explored through four women and their imagined conversations with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the 'most unmarried married woman' and for 27 years the public embodiment of waiting wives. The frame is Homer's Penelope, eternal symbol of the constant wife but a 'thing without agency', trapped in a social law created by men that demands an inhuman fidelity." Maya Jaggie, The Guardian.

"'The Cry of Winnie Mandela' transgresses the borders between fact and fiction, fusing aspects of the novel, biography, and essay. It is a beautiful book, the writing lucid and quietly passionate, a work of deep intelligence." Chris Dunton, Mail & Guardian.

Njabulo Ndebele was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town. He is the author of the novel "Fools and Other Stories", which won the Noma Award in 1983. He recently became President of the AAU and Chair of the Southern African Regional Universities Association.