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In ten superbly crafted stories, Zaheera Jina Asvat takes us into the private, individual worlds of a varied cast of characters and exposes the complicated weave of emotions so often concealed under the veneer of everyday lives. The stories provide a re-thinking of conventions and roles, enabling readers to challenge the social phenomena within the world that religion and culture govern. These stories are earthy, feeling portraits of people struggling against an oppressive system within post-apartheid South Africa. Bhajee's concern is a stolen electricity meter on his property, which cannot be replaced because a fictional Mr Ka Ching Ching is the registered owner, and Suhail Mangel, as a victim of xenophobia is worried that his family has cursed him. A Maulana thought to have a marriage potion in one story and in another a dying parrot that brings bad news. Then there is the woman who in Covid-19 lockdown is trying to fathom her broken marriage, a family fighting for inheritance in the face of religious law, the cat who is a bringer of gifts for her depressed owner, the daughter-in-law who questions her role as wife and mother, and the woman who cannot conceive and is offered the option of a surrogate in the form of a second wife. In this collection, the colourful characters cast their paths through the threads of their own fictional lives, as distraught and jubilant and uncertainly fragmented as any among us, the living.
