• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Home
  • New & Noteworthy
  • What We’re Reading
  • Kids
  • Shop
  • Contact Us

Free shipping for orders over R300 and within 20km of our store

Still Life by Zoë Wicomb

R290.00

A stunningly original new novel exploring race, truth in authorship, and the legacy of past exploitation, from the award winning author of You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb.

Wicomb tells the story of an author struggling to write a biography of long-forgotten Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, whose only legacy is being lauded as  the “Father of South African Poetry.” In her efforts to resurrect Pringle, the writer summons the specter of a West Indian slave, Pringle’s adopted Khoesan son, and Sir Nicholas Green, a seasoned time traveler.

In stock

Category: Local Fiction
  • More About This Book

Still Life by Zoë Wicomb

Few in his native Scotland know about Thomas Pringle; the abolitionist, publisher, and – some would say – Father of South African Poetry. A biography of Pringle is in order, and a reluctant writer picks up this task.

To help tell the story of Pringle is the spectre of Mary Prince, a West Indian slave whose history he had once published. Also offering advice is the ghost of Hinza Marossi, Pringle’s adopted Khoesan son, and the time-traveller Sir Nicholas Greene, a character exhumed from the pages of a book.

While Mary is breathing fire and Sir Nicholas’s heart is pining, Hinza is interrogating his origins. But what is to be made of the life of Prinle so many years after his death by this motley crew from the  1800s?

As the apparitions flit through time and space to put together the pieces of Pringle’s story and find their own place in his biography, Zoë Wicomb’s novel offers an acerbic exploration of colonial history in superb prose and with piercing wit.

 

 

You Might Be Interested In

  • Sex, Lies Declassified by Eva Mazza

    R260.00
    Add to cart
  • Skepsel deur Willem Anker

    R320.00
    Add to cart
  • Kinnes by Chase Rhys

    R230.00
    Add to cart

Follow us on social media:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Monday - Friday 09h00 - 17h00

Saturday 09h00 - 16h00

Sunday 10h00 to 16h00

021 462 2425

71 Roeland Street

Cape Town