Kagiso Lesego Molope

Kabelo Mosala has been the perfect child, bright and attractive. In his small South African community, it is expected that he will return after university to join his father’s medical practice. But all the while Kabelo and his schoolmate Sediba have harbored a strong mutual attraction that dare not show itself in the open. As they mature into young adulthood, and Kabelo becomes a doctor, they form a strong romantic relationship of intermittent secret encounters. But Kabelo is torn between his love for Sediba and his responsibility to his family and community. Can he return, openly declare his gay relationship, and yet serve his people who need him, at a time when young people are increasingly succumbing to the ravages of AIDS? In this tender love story, in her characteristic, beautifully modulated voice, with razor-sharp clarity Kagiso Lesego Molope tackles an urgent issue in her country of birth. (From Mawenzi House)

Kagiso Lesego Molope is an aboriginal South African author. She was born and raised in Mabopane, a township outside of Pretoria and she’s a graduate of the University of Cape Town in English Literature and Literary Theory. She has written several books, Dancing in the Dust was her first, and the first book by a South African of an African decent author to make the IBBY list in 2006. Her second book, The Mending Season was runner-up for the Percy Fitzpatrick Prize in 2012. Her third novel, This Book Betrays My Brother was published by OUPSA in 2012 and won the 2014 Percy Fitzpatrick Prize for Youth Literature. Molope’s shorts stories have been published in several anthologies and also read in schools across southern Africa. Her play Maya Angelou: Black Woman Rising premiers in Oslo, Norway in October 2019 and her fourth novel, Such a Lonely, Lovely Road was published in August 2018 in Canada and was named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2018. Molope was the British Council’s writer-in-residence at Charleston, England, for the 2016 Small Wonder Writers’ Festival.