This week we welcome the talented Yewande Omotoso, a novelist, architect, and one of the most quietly powerful voices in contemporary African fiction. Born in Barbados and raised in Nigeria, Omotoso moved to South Africa in 1992 and has since made Johannesburg her home. She studied architecture at the University of Cape Town before returning to the same institution for a Master’s degree in Creative Writing; a dual life that shows in her prose, which builds worlds with both structural precision and deep feeling. She is the author of three novels. Her debut, Bom Boy (2011), won the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the M-Net Literary Awards. Her second novel, The Woman Next Door (2016), was longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her latest novel, An Unusual Grief (2022), continues her unflinching exploration of love, loss and what it means to belong. She was also a 2013 Norman Mailer Fellow and the recipient of a 2014 Miles Morland Scholarship. Beyond the page, she serves on the board of PEN South Africa and works as a Storytelling Advisor with Greenpeace International.
Here are her 5 Favourites:
1. Edifice by Kole Omotoso (who also happens to be none other than Yewande’s beloved father!)
2. The Famished Road by Ben Okri
3. So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba
4. The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris by Leila Marouane
5. It Wasn’t Exactly Love, a collection of short stories published by Farafina.
