In recent years, the work of Zakes Mda - novelist, painter, composer, theatre director and film-maker - has attracted worldwide critical attention. As a novelist he writes about social identity in the `new' South Africa and it is the versions of this identity that Gail Fincham's book explores, examining the seven novels Mda has written since South Africa's transition to democracy. His explorations of refigured identity are rooted in his strongly painterly imagination which teaches his readers how to see anew by creating changed spaces in memory and culture.

Zakes Mda has been nominated for the International DUBLIN Literary Award 2016. This award is presented annually for a novel written in English or translated into English, and aims to promote excellence in world literature.