ISBN 9781779223456
ePub ISBN 9781779223463
Pages 82
Dimensions 210 x 140 mm
Published 2018
Publisher Weaver Press, Zimbabwe
Formats Paperback, eBook

O Suburbia

by John Eppel

Born in South Africa in 1947, John Eppel was raised in Zimbabwe, where he still lives, now retired, in Bulawayo. Eppel’s poetry collections include Spoils of War, which won the Ingrid Jonker prize, Sonata for Matabeleland, Selected Poems: 1965 – 1995, Songs My Country Taught Me, and Landlocked: New and Selected Poems from Zimbabwe, which was a winner in the International Poetry Workshop Prize, Judged by Billy Collins. Furthermore he has collaborated with Philani Amadeus Nyoni in a collection called Hewn From Rock, and with Togara Muzanenhamo in a collection called Textures, which won the 2015 NOMA Award. He has published three collections of poetry and short stories: The Caruso of Colleen Bawn, White Man Crawling, and, in collaboration with the late Julius Chingono, Together. His single collection of short stories is entitled White Man Walking.

Book Preview
Paperback
£18.20
eBook
£17.33

Reviews

‘... his poems have nothing to do do with white nostalgia for the colonial period. On the contrary, they circle round an attempt both to embrace a past (after all, he has no other source of identity) and also to wean himself from it.’

Stephen Watson

‘Eppel is a poet with a compulsive gift for the telling image …he has clung to a Southern African idiom and concerns, even though expert in a “world language.'

Geoffrey Haresnape

"It is impossible here to really exemplify the full richness and variety of this collection, which at times shows off Eppel at the height of his humane powers, at other points descends unabashedly into bathos and brief whimsies. It is substantial, at over 80 pages, and as welcome on the subcontinent as anything Eppel has ever written."

About the Author

John Eppel

In addition to writing short stories, John Eppel is also an award-winning poet and novelist. His first novel, D.G.G. Berry’s The Great North Road (1992), won the M-Net Prize in South Africa. His second novel, Hatchings (1993), was short-listed for the M-Net Prize and his third novel, The Giraffe Man (1994), has been translated into French.

His first poetry collection, Spoils of War (1989), won the Ingrid Jonker Prize. Other poems have been featured in anthologies that include The Heart in Exile South African Poetry in English 1990-1995 (1996) and Intwasa Poetry (2008) while his short stories have appeared in anthologies that include Short Writings from Bulawayo (2003), Short Writings from Bulawayo II (2005). Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (2005), Short Writings from Bulawayo III (2006), Laughing Now (2008), and Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Zimbabwe (2008). His latest published novel is Absent: The English Teacher.

Read an interview with John Eppel here: http://conversationswithwriters.blogspot.com/2007/02/interview-with-poet-novelist-and.html

Related Books