“Twenty years ago, Njabulo Ndebele, the influential South African critic in exile, called for intimacy and introspection to be restored to a literature dominated, in his view, by the spectacular and exterior, by heroic contests between the powerless and the powerful. At a time when culture was touted as a "weapon of struggle", he honed his singular vision of the "rediscovery of the ordinary" into lyrical fiction on a township boyhood, in Fools and Other Stories (1983).”
Maya Jaggi, The Guardian (Saturday April 24, 2004) Read the full review.
“Njabulo Ndebele has walked where angels fear to tread: he has made Winnie Mandela a character in an epic story that speaks powerfully about South Africa’s recent history and legacy.
Penelope. Winnie. Two proud women of legendary beauty. And how have they been defined? Through the imperative society places on women who wait for their husbands, their giftedness and destinies bent only to that end and no other. Defined utterly by their faithfulness or the lack of it.”
Beverley Roos, Cape Argus
“The Cry of Winnie Mandela attains the height of imaginative power to pursue the inconsistencies of human emotion and behaviour that reveal something of the always unattainable truth.”
Nadine Gordimer, South African Writer and Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1991
“Ndebele represents a rare breed of a writer: he combines political awareness with a sensitivity towards context, language and characterisation. The result is a gift offering to the present time…”
Dr Ato Quayson, Director, African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge, UK
“For so many decades South Africans have been thirsting for this text. I feel privileged to be of the country where it has originated.”
Antjie Krog, South African Award Winning Writer and Journalist
“The Cry of Winnie Mandela is ingeniously conceived, imaginatively structured and elegantly written. A humane, sympathetic and generous book on the one hand, but unflinching in its honesty.”
Dr Adotey Bing, Director, The Africa Centre, London, UK
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