Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Madonna of Excelsior
    The Madonna of Excelsior
    The Madonna of Excelsior
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Madonna of Excelsior

    Written by Zakes Mda

    Narrated by Robin Miles

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior, a farming community in South Africa's rural Free States, were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sexual relations between blacks and whites on the pretext of avoiding miscegenation. The women were jailed as they awaited trial and their white counterparts were released on bail. In the end, the state withdrew the charges, but the accused women's lives, already complicated, became harder than ever. Mda tells the story of a family at the heart of the scandal, revealing a country in which apartheid, even as it sought to keep the races apart, concealed interracial liaisons of every kind. Niki, the fallen Madonna, transgresses boundaries for the sake of love; her choices have profound repercussions in the lives of her black son, Viliki, and her mixed-race daughter, Popi, who come of age in the years after the end of apartheid, when freedom allows them - indeed compels them - to figure out their racial identities for themselves. As the story advances to the present, the mixed society of Excelsior comes to suggest South Africa today, a society far more complex - and more dramatic - than conventional notions of black and white will allow.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 1, 2011
    ISBN9781461811459
    The Madonna of Excelsior
    Author

    Zakes Mda

    ZAKES MDA (full names: Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda) is a South African writer, painter, composer and film maker. A novelist, poet and playwright of more than twenty works, he has won numerous literary awards in South Africa and the United States. When he isn’t writing, Zakes splits his time between teaching creative writing at Ohio University and beekeeping in the Eastern Cape. He is honorary patron of the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. "Rachel’s Blue" was written as a response to the legal situation that persists in many US states today – that the father of a child conceived as the result of a rape can still claim the same paternity rights as any other father.

    Related to The Madonna of Excelsior

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cherie Jones

      Jan 7, 2021

      Cherie Jones
      3 min read

    • Article

      Second Language

      Aug 14, 2017

      Second Language
      9 min read

    • Article

      You Have to Suffer

      Sep 23, 2020

      You Have to Suffer
      19 min read

    • Article

      The History Before Us

      Jan 21, 2019

      The History Before Us
      10 min read

    • Article

      We All Have Our Stories

      Mar 1, 2021

      We All Have Our Stories
      14 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Getting Down to The Bones Of It

      Apr 18, 2022

      The first line on the back of the memoir Prague in My Bones tells us that author Jindra Tichý is one of the most influential Czechs living abroad. The academic, writer and author of 19 novels has been living in Dunedin for the past 35 years. How she

      11 min read

    • Article

      Too Much, Magic Bus

      Dec 9, 2019

      Too Much, Magic Bus
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Posting

      Jun 27, 2023

      The Posting
      35 min read

    • Article

      Across The Whited Fields

      Oct 13, 2019

      In a twilight streeta small girl laughing. The red and yellow flowersprofuse, inhale the air. We want to hold your name,Polly, dancing in the rain Polly, skipping down the street.Sometimes the world bequeaths then takes away the one to whomou

      14 min read

    • Article

      A History of Killing Sparrows

      Oct 15, 2021

      A History of Killing Sparrows
      12 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & MUSIC

      Aug 19, 2019

      After leaving for Dakar, Senegal, in 2008 for a planned three-month trip, Lerato Mogoatlhe extended her travels and drifted around Africa for another five years, visiting 21 countries. Vagabond – Wandering through Africa on faith, her honest and ofte

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Herd word

      Jan 7, 2020

      The Herd word
      17 min read

    • Article

      Wild Routes

      Aug 13, 2021

      Wild Routes
      4 min read

    • Article

      Songs In The Key Of Life

      Dec 4, 2023

      They were two couples, lifelong friends. The wife of one had been dead a few months and the husband of the other had just died, and now they sat together at her dining room table. She asked for advice about the death notice; he had firm ideas about w

      2 min read

    • Article

      Peace Comes With A Smile

      Nov 11, 2019

      Peace Comes With A Smile
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Madonna of Excelsior

    4/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This is a truly relevant and moving South African story. The only critique I have is that the narrator butchered all the Sesotho words in the book. Maybe next time those sections should be read by someone who is familiar with how the words are pronounced. Well done to Zakes Mda for capturing the history so well and still fusing it with elements of fiction. Loved it?
    • 3/5
      Such an excellent book deserves a much better narration, the pronunciation of place names and fake Afrikaans accents detracts from a very insightful and thought provoking memory.