Description

“We yearn to live, yet living frustrates us; we yearn to strive higher, yet striving frustrates us; we yearn for progress, yet progress frustrates us. Truly, life is nothing but a race that everyone wants to win.” Follow the shenanigans of two schemers who set two traditional Kopa kings against each other, with the resultant warfare and civil lawsuits. This non-chronological narrative set in the mid 1800s weaves together tales of domestic and royal matters, war and diviners, and the arrival of people with hawkeyes (binoculars) and magic sticks that shoot buffalo “It is testimony to the imaginative energy of Tears of the Brain that the distant world it represents should resonate so deeply with our present. Matsepe shows us a society under pressure, full of contending voices, where small deceptions easily escalate into bitter conflict – without which, he assures us, no change is possible. This translation is a timely expansion of our literature: it offers us an ironic, worldly perspective on power and its abuse, on leadership and responsibility.” – Ivan Vladislavic, author