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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English
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BOM BOY

Yewande Omotoso

Winner of the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize
Shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature
Shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize

Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Leke's search to break the curse leads him to strange places.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016), Omotoso's second novel, was published to critical acclaim, and was a 2018 finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and a nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. She lives in Johannesburg.
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Book

Published 2011-09-01 by Catalyst Press

Comments

"Through three decades, two countries and multiple points of view, a complete picture of Leke's life in the present slowly surfaces in Yewande Omotoso's debut novel. [...] Despite his quirks, Leke's plight is curiously engaging as it speaks to the universal yearning to belong somewhere with someone." ?Shelf Awareness "In this intricate and evocative novel about loss and separation, every character, exchange, sentiment and locale is rendered with due precision. Yewande Omotoso is a remarkably perceptive writer." --Sefi Atta, author of Everything Good Will Come. "Bom Boy is an intricately structured literary novel that powerfully evokes family as a source of loss and struggle, but also of hope." ?Foreword Reviews "How did Yewande Omotoso pack so much in such a slender book? Bom Boy is a remarkable exploration of history and identity, love and loss. Omotoso's writing is honest, passionate and compelling." --Chika Ungiwe, author On Black Sisters Street and The Black Messiah.

"It's a short novel that packs in a whole lot" ? Book Riot, "5 Small-Press Books You Won't Want to Miss" One of "Seven new and noteworthy fiction titles about South Africa" (The Globe and Mail) "A window into another world." ? Literary Hub "Omotoso's concise prose captures the racial complexities of the book's backdrop while enabling her protagonist to find his own way with her evocative plotting." ? World Literature Today