Woman Next Door

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION Read this funny, sharp, delicately woven story of two women’s complicated relationship set in post-apartheid South Africa.Hortensia and Marion are next door neighbours in a charming, bougainvillea-laden Cape Town suburb. One is black, one white. Both are successful women with impressive careers behind them. Both have recently been widowed. Both are in their eighties. And both are sworn enemies, sharing hedge and hostility pruned with zeal. But one day an unforeseen event forces the women together. Could long-held mutual loathing transform into friendship?Love thy neighbour? Easier said than done. 'At once historical and contemporary, The Woman Next Door is charged with beauty, precision, nuance, and hope. Yewande Omotoso is a stunning, essential voice - NoViolet Bulawayo, author of We Need New Names‘Wit, charm and playful energy... An insightful and fascinating diptych of two women, with the history of colonialism and slavery lurking in the background’ Herald

[A] charming novel that brings the South African city [of Cape Town] to life, Wit, charm and playful energy... An insightful and fascinating diptych of two women, with the history of colonialism and slavery lurking in the background, Cape Town's answer to Mapp and Lucia, a war of wits and witticisms amid the bougainvillea of an impossibly smug neighborhood. Yewande Omotoso's deft writing and subtle weaving in of difficult history will leave you in love with these two stubborn old women. Delightful, A finely observed account of female prejudice, redemption and that often elusive commodity - friendship, At once historical and contemporary, The Woman Next Door is charged with beauty, precision, nuance, and hope. Yewande Omotoso is a stunning, essential voice

Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, moving to South Africa with her family in 1992. She is the author of Bom Boy, published in South Africa in 2011. In 2012 she won the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author and was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize. In 2013 she was a finalist in the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, where she writes and has her own architectural practice.