Masande Ntshanga is the author of the novels The Reactive and Triangulum. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Award in 2018, the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. He received a Fulbright Award, an NRF Freestanding Masters scholarship, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in The White Review, Chimurenga, VICE, n + 1, and Rolling Stone Magazine. His debut novel, The Reactive, was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature and a finalist for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize. He was born in East London, South Africa, in 1986 and graduated with a degree in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies from UCT, where he became a creative writing fellow, completing his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation.
A "Must-Read Book for June 2016." --FlavorwireA "Best Book of June
2016." --Men's Journal"The Reactive is not only a beautiful novel,
as fierce and formally innovative as it is lyrical and moving, but
also a call to inhabit as well as to critique the symbolic
structures of our world that can both empower and betray us."
--Full Stop"[The Reactive is] a searing, gorgeously written account
of life, love, illness, and death in South Africa. With exquisite
prose, formal innovation, and a masterful command of storytelling,
Ntshanga illustrates how some young people navigated the dusk that
followed the dawn of freedom in South Africa and humanizes the
casualties of the Mbeki government's fatal policies on HIV &
AIDS."
--Naomi Jackson, Poets & Writers"Woozy, touching... a novel that
delivers an unexpected love letter to Cape Town, painting it as a
place of frustrated glory. The Reactive often teems with a beauty
that seems to carry on in front of its glue-huffing wasters despite
themselves."
--Marian Ryan, Slate"One of South Africa's most promising new
voices... Ntshanga weaves a rollercoaster ride of a story that will
leave you questioning the meaning of family, despair, and
hope."
--Ayiba Magazine"[The Reactive] takes place during a period of
social and political tumult that mirrors that mental turmoil of the
lead character, and it makes for an extremely sharp, challenging
read. This is not a book about a fast-paced, compelling plot. It's
a character study, an emotional journey, and right from the opening
line, it's a brutal indictment"
--XOJane.com"Sharp and affecting... [Ntshanga] directs the story
with an amazing precision of language that few writers can achieve
in a lifetime of work. With a style all his own, Ntshanga animates
despair and agitation in a collage of moments, memories and
landscapes that speak volumes of a exigent moment in South African
history. Ntshanga grapples with the past and the too-real present
with grace, but not clemency, with hope, but not too much."
--Alibi"With The Reactive, [Ntshanga] has created an immersive and
powerful portrait of drug use, community, and health issues by
exploring what it was like to be young, black, South African, and
HIV positive in the early aughts."
--VICE"[The Reactive] is an affecting, slow-burning novel that
gives a fantastic sense of a particular place and time, and of the
haunted inner life of its protagonist."
--Minneapolis Star-Tribune"This novel about an HIV+ man who mourns
the death of his brother in Cape Town is shaping up to be one of
the best debuts of 2016."
--Flavorwire "Hailed as a fresh and fearless portrait of
contemporary South African life, The Reactive marks Ntshanga as a
global talent to watch."
--Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, Largehearted Boy "A book that sucks
us like vapor through the streets of Cape Town. [Ntshanga] has a
sympathetic ear for the particular rhythms of young friendship, the
banter, the petty arguments, the sticky and fleeting fun."
--The Rumpus "[The Reactive] is a seriously powerful book set in a
place I know little about, featuring people dealing with things I
know little about; but somehow, the amazing themes of redemption,
struggle, and the attempt to find meaning in life made it possible
to connect in a compelling way with these characters."
--Kelsey Westenberg, Roscoe Books"Ntshanga deftly illustrates the
growing pains of a new country through three friends who seem
intent on obliterating their minds, but who nevertheless cling to
their dreams."
--Vol. 1 Brooklyn "Gritty and revealing, Ntshanga's debut novel
offers a brazen portrait of present-day South Africa. This is an
eye-opening, ambitious novel."
--Publishers Weekly "Ntshanga offers a devastating story yet tells
it with noteworthy glow and flow that keeps pages turning until the
glimmer-of-hope ending."
--Library Journal "A powerful, compassionate story that refuses to
rest or shuffle off into the murk of the mind. It exists so that we
never forget."
--Numero Cinq Magazine "Electrifying... [Ntshanga] succeeds at
exploring major themes--illness, family, and, most effectively,
class--while keeping readers in suspense. Ntshanga's promising
debut is both moving and satisfyingly complex."
--Kirkus Reviews "[The Reactive is] one of this year's most
startling novels."
--Mail & Guardian"From time to time a novel comes along that is so
strange, yet so utterly fresh and compelling, that it feels tuned
into a reality with which you are not yet familiar."
--Aerodrome"One of [Ntshanga's] best qualities as a writer is to
defamiliarize aspects of South African existence, which through our
habits of speaking and writing, have boiled down to bland
indifference... The Reactive will probably remain, along with
Imraan Coovadia's High Low In-between and Jonny Steinberg's Three
Letter Plague, as a seminal work confronting [a] period in our
country's history."
--The Sunday Independent"Masande Ntshanga's debut novel The
Reactive follows an HIV-positive young man who is dealing with the
long-lasting trauma of his brother's death by selling his
antiretroviral drugs, chewing a lot of khat and drifting around
suburban Cape Town with his friends. Describing the novel baldly,
though, ignores its immense thematic depth. [The Reactive is] one
of this year's most startling novels."
--Mail & Guardian "Elegiac... an astoundingly brilliant novel,
radiating with understanding and compassion. It fulfills William
Faulkner's injunction that 'the poet's voice need not merely be the
record of man; it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him
endure and prevail.'"
--City Press"With a fine lyricism of style Ntshanga weaves a story
both filled with ennui and weird purpose. And if that sounds
unlikely, it is a feat he pulls off with brilliance... The shining
point of this novel is the author's ability to create the confusion
and changes young South Africans have to deal with. In a modern
state there are calls and cries from the past that still make
claims on them. They face uncertainty with their loud music, their
counter-cultural lifestyles, but beneath the veneer they are all
likeable characters who are searching for authenticity. Never
preachy or pretentious, this book is a breath of fresh air in an
often fetid landscape. Read it, savor the beauty of the writing,
and you will find yourself drawn into a dreamscape you may
recognize."
--The New Age
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