Bom Boy - by Yewande Omotoso (Paperback)

About the Book

From the Dublin Literary Award and Women's Prize for Fiction longlisted author of The Woman Next Door and An Unusual Grief

Wandering in Cape Town, Leke stalks people, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of a cure. But he isn't sure what ails him--loneliness, or the family curse.

Book Synopsis

• From the Dublin Literary Award and Women's Prize for Fiction longlisted author of The Woman Next Door and An Unusual Grief
  


• Winner of the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize


• Shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature


• Featured in the New York Times' "Globetrotting" sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world


• One of "Seven new and noteworthy fiction titles about South Africa" The Globe and Mail

Wandering in Cape Town, Leke stalks people, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of a cure. But he isn't sure what ails him--loneliness, or the family curse.

Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Leke's search to break the curse leads him to strange places.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel Bom Boy was published in South Africa by Modjaji Books in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016), Omotoso's second novel, was published to critical acclaim. She lives in Johannesburg.

Review Quotes

"[A] story about grief, loneliness, and a hunger for belonging. [...] A short and refreshing novel that I very much recommend" --Wyatt Bandt, Shelf Unbound

"A window into another world." --Literary Hub

"It's a short novel that packs in a whole lot"-- Book Riot, "5 Small-Press Books You Won't Want to Miss"

"Omotoso's concise prose captures the racial complexities of the book's backdrop while enabling her protagonist to find his own way with her evocative plotting." World Literature Today

"Through three decades, two countries and multiple points of view, a complete picture of Leke's life in the present slowly surfaces in Yewande Omotoso's debut novel. [...] Despite his quirks, Leke's plight is curiously engaging as it speaks to the universal yearning to belong somewhere with someone." -- Shelf Awareness

Featured in the New York Times' "Globetrotting" sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world.

One of "Seven new and noteworthy fiction titles about South Africa" The Globe and Mail