What We Lose
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- $139.00
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- $139.00
Descripción editorial
A short, intense and profoundly moving debut novel about race, identity, sex and death – from one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35
Thandi is a black woman, but often mistaken for Hispanic or Asian.
She is American, but doesn’t feel as American as some of her friends.
She is South African, but doesn’t belong in South Africa either.
Her mother is dying.
‘Zinzi Clemmons’s debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored’ Paul Beatty, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2016
‘Navigates the many registers of grief, loss and injustice … acutely moving’ Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland
‘Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy’ Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
Reviews
‘The debut novel of the year … visceral, cerebral, provocative, elegiac. One can’t help but think of Clemmons as in the running to be the next-generation Claudia Rankine’ Vogue
‘Luminescent’ Independent
‘A lovely little headrush of a novel … if you enjoyed Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing then try this’ Sunday Times Style
‘Bracingly clear-eyed … the tension between her steady prose and turbulent emotions is beautifully sustained’ Daily Mail
‘Highly original. Zinzi Clemmons deftly explores grief, sex and identity’ Elle
‘Concise and powerful. This original and challenging debut is a must-read for fans of literary fiction and memoir’ Bookriot
‘Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit – wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons’s debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored’ Paul Beatty
‘What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice . . . acutely moving’ Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland
'I loved this beautiful, honest and entrancing meditation on love, loss and the relationships that enrich and complicate our lives’ Bernardine Evaristo
About the author
Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Paris Review Daily, Transition and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor to Literary Hub. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Exacting reflections on race, mourning, and family are at the center of this novel about a college student whose mother dies of cancer. Born to an American father and a South African mother, Thandi is a character defined by conflicting conceptions of identity, belonging, and class, divisions that only deepen in the wake of her mother's death. Early chapters establish these dichotomies in content and form, contrasting Thandi's charged visits to Johannesburg with her Philadelphia coming of age by way of photographs, articles, graphs, and song lyrics. The first third of the novel culminates with Thandi discovering that she is pregnant, before then detailing her mother's illness and how the resulting heartbreak ushered Thandi into an ill-fated long distance relationship with Peter, the child's father. Peter moves to New York to marry Thandi and raise their child, Mahpee, but all parties soon glean the untenability of Thandi's building a new family without processing the grief of her original one. Though too restrained, there are some inspired moments, and Clemmons admirably balances the story's myriad complicated themes.
