October - Paperback

by Zoë Wicomb (Author)

A South African academic returns to her homeland where she tries to connect her past and the present in this novel by the "extraordinary" (Toni Morrison) award-winning author of You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town

In October, acclaimed fiction writer Zoë Wicomb tells the story of Mercia Murray, a South African woman of color in the midst of a difficult homecoming. Abandoned by her partner in Scotland, where she has been living for twenty-six years, Mercia returns to South Africa to find her family overwhelmed by alcoholism and buried secrets. Poised between her new life in Scotland and her South African roots, Mercia recollects the past and assesses the present with a keen sense of irony. October is a stark and utterly compelling novel about the contemporary experience of a woman caught between cultures, adrift in middle age with her memories and an uncertain future.

Author Biography

Zoë Wicomb (1948-2025) was a South African writer living in Glasgow, Scotland, where she was emeritus professor at the University of Strathclyde. She is the author of Still Life, The One That Got Away, and Playing in the Light, all published by The New Press, as well as You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town and David's Story. She was an inaugural winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize in fiction.