The Madonna of Excelsior

“Forbidden love between the races drives this fast-paced courtroom drama set in Apartheid-era South Africa.” —Salon.com

“A marvelous work, rich with 'beautiful madness.'” ―Los Angeles Times Book Review

In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex between blacks and whites. Taking this case as raw material for his alchemic imagination, Zakes Mda tells the story of a family at the heart of the scandal—and of a country in which apartheid concealed interracial liaisons of every kind.

Niki, the fallen madonna, transgresses boundaries for the sake of love; her choices have repercussions in the lives of her black son and mixed-race daughter, who come of age in post-apartheid South Africa, where freedom prompts them to reexamine their country's troubled history at first hand.

By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, The Madonna of Excelsior is a brilliant depiction of life in South Africa and of the dramatic changes between the 1970s and the present.

“A generous, patient, wry and intelligent voice . . . [that] suggests not just a writer who can seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor. We also encounter a writer who has the power to shock and frighten us, to astound and anger and unsettle us . . . In short, his is a voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration.” —Neil Gordon, New York Times Book Review