Novuyo Tshuma’s first novel House of Stone will be published by Atlantic Books in the UK in June 2018.

The book will be published by WW Norton in the USA in January 2019.

House of Stone is described as ‘a striking, rambunctious, Tom Ripley-ish debut about cuckoos in the family nest, the death of colonial Rhodesia and the bloody birth of corrupt Zimbabwe’.

Bukhosi has gone missing. His father, Abed, and his mother, Agnes, cling to the hope that he has run away, rather than been murdered by government thugs. Only the lodger seems to have any idea. Zamani has lived in the spare room for years now. Quiet, polite, well-read and well-heeled, he’s almost part of the family – but ‘almost’ isn’t quite good enough for Zamani. Cajoling, coaxing and coercing Abed and Agnes into revealing their sometimes tender, often brutal, life stories, Zamani aims to steep himself in borrowed family history, so that he can fully inherit and inhabit its uncertain future.

Tshuma grew up in Zimbabwe, and has lived in South Africa and the USA. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2015). Her debut collection of short stories, Shadows, was published to critical acclaim in 2013 by Kwela, and won the 2014 Herman Charles Bosman Prize.

‘Novuyo Tshuma writes with an equal commitment to Joycean formal inventiveness and political conscience, and the result is absolutely thrilling.’ – Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

‘Tshuma writes in arresting and trenchant prose that shows a gifted artist at work.’ – NoViolet Bulawayo, author of We Need New Names

Categories Africa Fiction International South Africa

Tags Atlantic Books House of Stone Kwela Novuyo Tshuma Shadows WW Norton Zimbabwe