Buried in the Chest

I would have probably called it Gut Punch in the Stomach, because this book left me breathless. If you know South African rural landscapes, the environment in which this story is set is going to feel very familiar in a way that I haven’t really experienced in literature before. And for all the things I thought I knew about South Africa’s history with apartheid in particular, there is something I hadn’t thought about – how women experienced its brutality in the rural areas as a result of migrant labour – and Buried in the Chest will make you question yourself, will make you question what you know about history. When I had finished reading it, I thought, what if our protagonist Unathi had a slightly different ending? If things had worked out differently, where would they go? And I love that it was possible for me to think about other alternatives to where the book went. I have been transformed by thinking about how stories disappear in history but also how they disappear when we don’t excavate the secrets that lie within us, within our families, and within our communities.