Zakes Mda writes on climate change for the New York Times
January 5, 2010
As part of a pre-Copenhagen series on climate change, the New York Times asked writers from around the world to give their own report on the climate changes they've experienced close to home. For Africa, the newspaper chose Zakes Mda. You can read his article 'South Africa's Fire Kingdom' here.Zakes Mda is a writer, painter, composer and film maker. He commutes between South Africa and the U.S. as professor of creative writing at Ohio University, beekeeper in the Eastern Cape, dramaturge at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, and a director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust.
Author of seven novels, he has won the Africa Commonwealth Writers Prize, the SA Sunday Times Fiction Award, been longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award, and shortlisted for the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. He is now writing his memoirs SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID for Penguin SA and FSG in the US.
Praise for Zakes Mda:
'Mda writes from the inside with a rare combination of passion and truth that will connect with readers everywhere.' -- Booklist
'A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration.'
-- The New York Times
'In novel after novel, Zakes Mda seems to have cultivated a mode of writing in which the realistic and the magical co-exist with unruffled ease.'
-- Harry Garuba, Independent
'Zakes Mda is among the most acclaimed exponents of a new artistic freedom. His fiction has a beguiling lyricism and humour, revelling in the beauty of aloe-covered mountains or Cape marine life.'
-- Maya Jaggi, The Guardian