Bird-Monk Seding – Lesego Rampolokeng

Description

“Bird-Monk Seding, Rampolokeng’s third novel, is a stark picture of life in a rural township in the North West province, two decades into South Africa’s democracy. Listening and observing in the streets and taverns, narrator Bavino Sekete, often feeling desperate himself, is thrown back to his own violent childhood in Soweto. To get through, he turns to his pantheon of jazz innovators and radical writers.”

“There are new things in this book. The personal voice is not so relentlessly a voice of disgust as it has sometimes been. Though the shifts between affectionate memory and visceral horror still happen fast enough to feel like a punch in the guts, there are more of the former than there used to be. There’s nobility, fortitude and love in the lives of people such as Seding’s Pogisho and Mmaphefo, risking everything to protect their son. […] It declares it’s a novel. Believe it.” – Gwen Ansell

About the Author

From the Deep South Website:
“Lesego Rampolokeng is a poet and performer, the author since 1990 of 13 books, including eight books of poetry, a playscript, and four novels. He has collaborated with visual artists, playwrights, filmmakers, theatre and opera producers, poets and musicians. His no-holds-barred style, radical-political aesthetic and instantly recognisable voice have brought him a unique place in South African literature.
Rampolokeng won the NIHSS award for his poetry collection a half century thing, and the UJ fiction prize for his novel Bird-Monk Seding. He has performed his poetry in several countries in Europe, as well as in the USA, Colombia and Brazil, and has shared the stage with poets Linton Kwesi Johnson, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and Mutabaruka.”