Botho Lejowa, a Motswana writers, has published a new book titled Meetings with Death. The book tells the story of Eana, a girl who can see death. The fictional world in the novel is influenced by traditions of magical thought steeped in South African mythology.  The story takes place in a wide variety of spaces, in the ancestral and supernatural realms but also on the streets of everyday life. Lejowa’s books is yet another story that centers African girlhood as a site of power and becoming. Eana is a determined character who embraces the changes taking place in her life. She goes on adventures. She battles evil forces. She is as inspiring as her life is captivating.

Lejowa’s book comes out of her participation in the African Writers Trust Publishing Fellowship Program in which 10 African writers were invited to explore “the self-publishing process from editing all the way to marketing after publication.” She recollects in an email to us that the experience was “a highly insightful week that opened my eyes to incredible opportunities in the self-publishing space…After the program, the ten of us were given an opportunity to apply for their publishing grant and when I won it, I was able to use the funds to publish Meeting with Death.”

Read the publisher’s description of Meeting with Death.

Meetings with Death is a story about a Southern African girl, Eana, with the unique ability to see Death. The story follows the evolution of her relationship with one of the oldest supernatural beings in existence. That relationship puts the spotlight on her in a power-hungry world of magic and forces her to fight for her life. She battles against an organization of Shamans that has declared her family anathema. This organization harbors the greatest wielder of dark magic, who is hell bent on capturing Eana for himself. She is forced into unlikely alliances and uncovers painful betrayals as she tries to make space in this new world for the creature that she is becoming. Her travels through the spiritual realm bring her face to face with beings that she believed only existed in myth and now she is forced to confront the idea that she might become one of them herself. The book follows the themes of spirituality, magic, taboo, rituals and the supernatural entities that are woven through African beliefs and twists them into a modern fantasy epic set in both the streets of our everyday lives and the realms of the ancestral and supernatural beings.

BUY Meeting with Death: Amazon