The Wanderers - by Mphuthumi Ntabeni (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Across countries and decades, The Wanderers weaves a captivating tapestry of human lives, exploring the enduring-and sometimes contradictory--duties of blood and country.

Ruru's father, a South African freedom fighter, was exiled to Tanzania before she was born, leaving Ruru and her mother to fend for themselves in the township they called home. So when a fatal bus accident claims her mother's life, Ruru is adrift.

Haunted by her mother's absence, another loss sits heavy on Ruru's heart: that of her father, who never returned to the family, or country, he claimed to love. When she learns of his passing, Ruru grieves for the man she never knew, and the answers she would never find.

She seeks solace in Tanzania, where she strikes up an unlikely friendship with her father's widow, a Rwandan refugee named Efuoa. Efuoa gifts Ruru her father's journals, and as she reads, she begins to piece together the fragments of a complicated life of deep love, shifting identity, small triumphs and haunting disappointments.

Review Quotes

"Ntabeni deftly enhances the familial with extensive political, socioeconomic, and cultural histories in and beyond South Africa. ...Ntabeni's dense fiction bears salient witness to decades of destruction, confrontation, reconciliation, and eventual hope." - Terry Hong, Booklist

"Ambitious.... the novel soars in its unvarnished takes on South Africa's current situation and in its presentation of a Black South African story. The Wanderers is a cerebral novel that depicts South Africa's modern history through the story of an absent father." -- Foreword Reviews

"The South African writer Mphuthumi Ntabeni's The Wanderers [...] moves deftly between deep knowledge of 19th-century divisions among Xhosa people and contemplation of how its main character, in grieving the loss of a father she never knew, finds new forms of cross-generational intimacy." --Jeanne-Marie Jackson, The New York Times

[...] the novel's lasting impact lies in its themes of found family, the complicated journeys we take in pursuit of companionship, and the way unfulfillment shapes our daily choices. Ntabeni reminds us that circumstances carry lifelong weight--but also that sometimes we must come full circle to truly recognize the gifts that were always there, waiting for us to see them. --Eryka Parker, African American Literature Book Club

"[The Wanderers] is a page-turner. Here is the voice of contemporary South African fiction." -- Joanne Ruth Davis, The Johannesburg Review of Books.

The Wanderers is an atmospheric novel that lingers unforgettably in the mind. --Book Lounge(South Africa)

"There is majesty, command and originality in Ntabeni's writing. The magnificence of [The Wanderers] mix of history and fiction lies in his imaginative exploration of loss, longing, and love."-- Tembeka Ngcukaitobi author of The Land Is Ours and Land Matters

About the Author

Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a South African author who lives in Cape Town. He is trained in the economics of built environment, reads history and literature as something more than a hobby. He's particularly passionate about the South African Frontier history and the wars of land dispossession.