She Plays with the Darkness A Novel

In a remote mountain village in Lesotho, the beautiful Dikosha lives for dancing and for song, setting herself apart from her fellow villagers. Her twin brother, Radisene, works in the lowland capital of Maseru, struggling amid political upheaval to find a life for himself away from the hills. As the years pass, Radisene's fortunes rise and fall in the city, while Dikosha remains in the village, never leaving and never aging. And through it all, the community watches, comments, and passes judgment.

Zakes Mda, a novelist and playwright, is also the author of The Madonna of Excelsior, Ways of Dying, and The Heart of Redness. A former visiting professor at Yale and the University of Vermont, he is Professor of Literature at Ohio University. He lives in Athens, Ohio.

"Mda's fascinating narrative skill reveals the past as a powerful presence in the present: of his characters, and of all of us, as we live."--Nadine Gordimer