Masobe Books has announced the acquisition and reissue of Sue Nyathi’s novel The Polygamist, a tale of four women whose lives become intertwined when they all fall for a wealthy banking magnate, Jonasi Gomora. The book is now a major Netflix series, which premiered on June 12, 2026 and became one of the streamer’s biggest African hits. The reissue is coming to stores in the first quarter of 2027, with the release date to be announced shortly.

Jonasi Gomora is handsome, successful, and irresistible. He is also a husband who refuses to belong to just one woman. As his marriage to Joyce unravels and other women enter his life, love gives way to rivalry, betrayal, and a battle for what each woman believes she deserves. But The Polygamist is not only Jonasi’s story. Told through the voices of the women who love, resent, desire, and survive him, it reveals the complicated lives hidden behind wealth, marriage, and appearances. From glamorous Harare homes to bedrooms, boardrooms, and hospital wards, Nyathi explores the costs of infidelity, the bonds of family, and the resilience of women forced to rebuild their lives around a man who keeps choosing more.

The novel first appeared in 2012, and its second life on screen has been remarkable. Netflix’s 22-episode South African supernovela, produced by Stained Glass Productions, stars Gugu Gumede and S’dumo Mtshali as Joyce and Jonasi Gomora. The series opened at No. 2 on Netflix’s Global Top 10 Non-English Shows chart, reached No. 1 in 21 countries and entered the Top 10 in 62, becoming one of Netflix’s biggest African hits. Netflix reports that sales of the book tripled after the series debuted. Nyathi has spoken about the novel’s difficult beginnings: after being rejected by traditional publishers, she self-published 500 copies in 2012. She has described the series as having “opened doors” for her and given her a level of visibility that writers from the “deep south” rarely get.

Nyathi was born and raised in Bulawayo and lives in Johannesburg. She is the author of four novels: The Polygamist (2012), The Gold Diggers (2018), A Family Affair (2020), and An Angel’s Demise (2022), which won the Novel Award at the 2023 South African Literary Awards. Before turning to writing full time in 2018, she spent more than 15 years in the financial-services sector as an investment analyst. She has also edited the anthology When Secrets Become Stories: Women Speak Out (2021), a nonfiction collection focused on women’s experiences of gender-based violence, and co-authored Positively Me: Daring to Live and Love Beyond HIV (2024) with Nozibele Mayaba. She served as guest curator of #ZimbabweLitMonth in 2023 and has also worked in screenwriting. Nyathi is currently working on her fifth novel.

The Polygamist is coming to stores in the first quarter of 2027.