During the highly anticipated Franschhoek Literary Festival this year (16-18 May), I will have the pleasure of discussing our debut novels with the award-winning author Nadia Davids. Our event is scheduled for Saturday 2.30pm and will take place in the Hospice Hall. To buy tickets, click here: Author-to-Author [71] (R60).

Nadia Davids’ work has been published, produced and performed in southern Africa, Europe and the United States. She was awarded the Rosalie van der Gucht Prize for new directors for her play At Her Feet and received three Fleur de Cap Award nominations for Cissie. Nadia holds a PhD in Drama from UCT and lives in London, where she lectures in the drama department at Queen Mary University of London. Her debut novel, An Imperfect Blessing, was published in April.

About An Imperfect Blessing:
“It is 1993. South Africa is on the brink of total transformation and in Walmer Estate, a busy suburb on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, fourteen-year-old Alia Dawood is about to undergo a transformation of her own. She watches with fascination and fear as the national drama unfolds, longing to be a part of what she knows to be history in the making. As her revolutionary aspirations strengthen in the months before the elections, her intense, radical Uncle Waleed reappears, forcing her parents and sister Nasreen to confront his subversive and dangerous past.

Nadia David’s first novel moves across generations and communities, through the suburbs to the city centre, from the lush gardens of private schools to the dingy bars of Observatory, from landmark mosques and churches to the manic procession of the Cape Carnival, through evictions, rebellions, political assassinations and first loves. The book places one family’s story at the heart of a country’s rebirth and interrogates issues of faith, race, belonging and freedom.”

Nadia Davids and I do not know each other in person (yet!), but we have quite a lot in common. We were both born in 1977 and do not live in the countries of our birth. We have academic backgrounds and completed our PhDs in 2008. We are playwrights, short-story writers, and debut novelists this year. I look forward to discussing our novelistic firstborns, An Imprefect Blessing and Invisible Others at the festival.

Nadia Davids’ other scheduled events at the FLF:
Friday 11.30am [9] Playwrights Strut and Fret
Friday 4pm [37] Revelling in South African English
Sunday 11.30am [93] The Considered Canon