Bantubonke is an accomplished and revered jazz trumpeter, composer and band leader in decline – an absent present and inadequate spouse.
He lives for art at the expense of all else, an imbalance that derails his life and propels him to the brink of madness and despair.
A story of direct and implied betrayals, Illumination is an unrelenting study of possession and loss, of the beauty and uncertainty of love, of the dangers and intrusions of fame.
‘Illumination is a glorious celebration of the unfathomable nature of friendship and a deft appraisal of a complex individual’s and South Africa’s most pressing ills.’ – Tsitsi Dangarembga
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nthikeng Mohlele was partly raised in Limpopo and Tembisa Township, and attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Art, Publishing Studies and African Literature.
He is the author of five critically acclaimed novels: The Scent of Bliss (2008), Small Things (2013), Rusty Bell (2014), Pleasure (2016) and Michael K (2018).
Pleasure won the 2016 University of Johannesburg Main Prize for South African Writing in English as well as the 2017 K. Sello Duiker Memorial Prize at the South African Literary Awards.
Illumination is Mohlele’s sixth novel.
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