Reneilwe Malatji’s debut short story collection, Love Interrupted, was published on August 7 in the U.S., by Catalyst Press. Its stories offer an intimate portrait of women—sisters, aunts, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, mothers-in-law—navigating the complexities of love in South Africa. In one, a baby is born with the wrong color. In another, a college graduate’s family cannot be seated at a restaurant full of Whites. In another, a former domestic help realises her aspirations to own a construction company, and yet, “the scars of her difficult childhood remain, denying her complete happiness and peace.”
Love Interrupted has been praised by Kirkus Review for the ways in which “many readers will see themselves in—and find themselves rooting for—the women in Malatji’s solid debut.” Here is a description by Catalyst Press.
In her debut collection of short fiction, Reneilwe Malatji invites us into the intimate lives of South African women—their whispered conversations, their love lives, their triumphs and heartbreaks.
This diverse chorus of female voices recounts misadventures with love, family, and community in powerful stories woven together with anger, politics, and wit. Malatji crafts an engaging collection full of rich, memorable characters who navigate work, love, patriarchy, and racism with thoughtfulness, strength, and humor.
Reneilwe Malatji was born in South Africa in 1968. She grew up in Turfloop township, in the northern part of South Africa, during the era of apartheid. Malatji trained as a teacher and worked as a subject specialist and advisor to provincial education departments. She recently completed a post-graduate diploma in Journalism and an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. She works as a lecturer at the University of Limpopo in South Africa and has an adult son.
An independent publisher focused on books by Africans and about Africa, Catalyst Press, we were informed via email by publicity director Ashawnta Jackson, also recently published Somali-American author Ahmed Ismail Yusuf’s short story collection The Lion’s Binding Oath.
Congratulations to Reneilwe Malatji.
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