Perhaps the best known of Mda's novels, Ways of Dying is
a peculiar and heady mix of love story, myth, tragedy and the
opposing tropes of life and death. It's the story of Toloki, a
self-styled 'professional mourner' whose attempts to make it in the big
city are foiled time and time again. Living rough and scratching
out a living, he nevertheless manages to hold together the
semblance of a dignified existence. And then there is beautiful Noria,
a 'home-girl' from Toloki's village, whose experiences of township life
are as mixed as those of Toloki. The narrative moves effortlessly from
the past, the present to the future and comments on the vagaries of
village life as opposed to life in the squatter camps.
From squatter camp to village idyll Mda reminds us that there are
many horrific (and often pointless) ways to die: there's the
rape-murder of a young mother, a mass murder after a dispute over
a tin of canned beef, the necklacing of a child, a death by fire and a
death by sorrow. Conversely, and more importantly, he also points out
that there are also many ways to live, and it is here that the reader
shares in the paradoxical highs and lows of the main character's lives.
Despite the often gruesome subject matter, the novel is Mda-style
humorous. For example, there is the spectacularly overweight
opportunist character Nefolovhodwe, who makes a fortune capitalising
on death (he invents a collapsible coffin), and then spends
his ill-gotten gains on the pointless enterprise of
attempting to set up a flea circus.
Compulsively readable, it could just as suitably be
entitled, 'Ways of Living'.
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