Nthikeng Mohlele - Böcker

In this haunting tale of love and learning, the existential chaos of a life ravaged by circumstance takes on a rhythm of its own, one bound by loss and loneliness, but also an intelligent awareness of self. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes brutal, occasionally funny and infuriating, a journalist-comrade-lover caught up in the shade and shadow of politics and social injustice faces treachery and betrayal on every level. Set against the backdrop of a cityscape that taunts and tantalises, this is where love fails and passion wanes, “where suffering has no meaning”, where an individual escapes death only to find himself confronted with choices wrought by remorse and retribution, by conscience and character. And yet, with all trauma, there is a distinct musicality to the lyrical unpacking that follows a string of small things …

“I wrestled with life and lost.” So begins the story of Michael, a corporate lawyer known to his colleagues and associates as Sir Marvin, who picks his way – sometimes delicately, but more often in his own blundering way – through the unfathomable intricacies that make up a life: love and anger, humility and ambition, trust and distrust, selfishness and selflessness. A flawed individual with an acute understanding of the roads that must be navigated to achieve even the slightest insight into the human condition. In this study in introspection, embroidered with lyrical prose and astonishing intuition, the hero, meditative and melancholic, is at once both tragic and comic.

The Discovery of Love, explores and heightens one of the dominant themes in Nthikeng Mohlele’s literary oeuvre, that of love. In this collection, love is reflected upon in expansive and unexpected dimensions. It becomes the backdrop against which Mohlele delves into the intricacies of human agency with profound and often unexpected effects. These stories dazzle; they are wide-ranging in scope, yet particular in their authorial intent.

Storyteller-in-chief, Nthikeng Mohlele, spins another glorious tale: a former high-flying politician who now sleeps under a bridge in Johannesburg’s city centre and washes dishes to survive. As his mind wanders in this self-imposed exile, he contemplates his political party, the false promises, the jaded ideology and hypocrisy that runs rampant, and the deception and treachery underpinning it. As his reveries take him through past relationships and a marriage which ended in adultery, his disillusionment, his fractured mind and unravelling personal life which led to this strange spiritual retreat is revealed. Molehle is a master at probing the depths of human consciousness and in Revolutionaries’ House he asks: how do we hold a unified moral self?