THE VEIL OF MAYA

251pp., paperback, New Edition, Karavan Press, Cape Town, 2024

ISBN: 9781037021862

First edition published in 2022.

Winner of the 2023 NIHSS Best Fiction Novel Award and the 2024 UCT Book Award.

Cape Town geneticist Lena Brown is asked to investigate whether there is a genetic basis for an outbreak of madness amongst a group of men in a small town in rural Eswatini. Here, her western methods of investigative medicine come up against the traditional stories and beliefs of the Swati.

Medical doctor Chantal Stewart works in a government hospital and in her spare time facilitates creative writing workshops. The Veil of Maya is her debut novel.