The whale caller is living a quiet life in his bungalow on South Africa's Eastern cape, spending calling out to sea to the whales that seem to be calling back to him, eating macaroni cheese each night. The peaceful rhythm of his days are only interrupted by the whale tourists each summer: busloads of people with long lenses who fill the streets of this burgeoning new South African town and stare African town and stare at the man who stands on the cliffs and watches the ocean.

However, soon the whale caller's peace will be permanently shattered when a drunken woman in stilettos who has been following him about for weeks finally manages to invadehis life for good. Together they form a strange and intense love affair, brimming with desire and disappointment, alcohol and Jealousy,that threatens to undo them. Beautifully written and utterly original, The Whale Caller's world is by turns enchanting and very real, a place where loneliness and love both bring their share of sorrow and magic.

 

'Tender humour and brutal violence vie with each other in Mda's pages, as do vibrant life and sudden death. The struggle between them an energetic and refreshing literature for a country still coming to terms with both both the new and the old'

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

'mda refuses to undermine his nation's problems with cheap melodrama. But he doesn't shortchange the inherent horrors of apartheid,or South Africa's struggles to heal itself.Yet his gift, in addition to being an extraordinary writer, is to infuse the past with meaning, to make urgent the challenges of the present, and to reveal the gentle, often stinging, human comedy in both'

BOSTON GLOBE

'Black South Africa has found a strong new voice in Zakes Mda, a marvellous storyteller'

ECONOMIST