We inherit the fire : a novel / Kagiso Lesego Molope.
"A vivid, atmospheric novel set against the end of apartheid in South Africa, centred on a family of Black women who fracture and fall back together again amidst a nation-wide reckoning. Kewame "Dolly" Malaka is unravelling. A former political prisoner, now a mother and mistress of a beautiful home, she struggles to maintain a fragile image of domestic perfection, finding herself lost somewhere between childhood, prison, and the present. Kelelo, Kewame's teenage daughter, is growing up in a time when the things her mother fought for are being realized. At school, Kelelo enjoys a certain level of fame as the child of a former political prisoner. At home, she wrestles with the painful reality of an emotionally distant mother, who shrouds her past in silence and secrecy. In gorgeously rendered, unflinching prose, We Inherit the Fire entwines the intimate with the historical, injustice with resilience, and tenderness with pain in its excavation of the fractured bonds between generations. With the startling specificity and boundary-breaking potential of Francesca Ekwuyasi's Butter Honey Pig Bread, this novel sears its mark onto the reader's memory long after the final page."-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780771019852 (hardcover)
- Physical Description: 328 pages ; 22 cm
- Publisher: Toronto, ON : McClelland & Stewart, 2026.
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| Genre: | Historical fiction. Novels. |
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
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| Stroud Branch | ON ORDER | pr08121307 | FICTION | On order | - |
- Random House, Inc.
A gorgeously rendered, unflinching portrait of the fractured relationship between a mother and her daughterâset against the tumultuous end of apartheid in South Africa.
There is that photograph, of course. My mother: standing in front of a soldier, closer than anyone else would dare . . .
In late-1980s South Africa, teenager Kelelo is forced to leave her mountain school for a newly desegregated school in town, where her identity as the daughter of celebrated freedom fighter Kewame âDollyâ Malaka makes her an instant curiosity. While her classmates see her as a symbol of progress, at home she struggles with a mother who is emotionally unreachable, still haunted by the violence and deprivation she endured as a political prisoner under apartheid.
Kewame, now living in material comfort, hides a growing inner collapse as memories of prison life and the women who sustained her resurface, stirred by her grandmotherâs illness and the pressure of maintaining a façade of perfection. As mother and daughter navigate a shifting political landscape, We Inherit the Fire interlaces their voices to reveal the unspoken wounds, buried histories, and complex inheritance of resilience, pain, and responsibility that bind and divide generations of Black South African women.