Imagen del autor

Yewande Omotoso

Autor de The Woman Next Door

4+ Obras 381 Miembros 23 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Incluye los nombres: Yewande Omotoso, Yewande Omotosa

Créditos de la imagen: Pen South Africa

Obras de Yewande Omotoso

The Woman Next Door (2016) 332 copias
Bom Boy (2011) 34 copias
An Unusual Grief (2021) 13 copias

Obras relacionadas

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
1980
Género
female
Nacionalidad
Nigeria
South Africa
Lugar de nacimiento
Bridgetown, Barbados
Lugares de residencia
Ife Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
Johannesburg, South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa
Educación
University of Cape Town
Ocupaciones
architect
designer
novelist
Relaciones
Omotoso, Kole (father)
Omotoso, Akin (brother)
Biografía breve
Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados. She grew up in Nigeria and moved to South Africa in 1992. Yewande trained as an architect and is a designer, freelance writer, poet and novelist. After completing a Masters degree in Creative Writing, her debut novel Bom Boy was published in 2011 by Modjaji Books. It won the 2012 South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize in South Africa as well as the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and was the runner-up for the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature. Yewande lives in Johannesburg.

Miembros

Reseñas

Yewande Omotoso writes about two elderly women. They are neighbours in an affluent estate in Capetown, South Africa and have both been succesful in their field. Marion, a white woman and widow with adult children, is chair of the neighborhood committee and a pair of binoculars. Hortensia, a black woman, moved to South Africa from Nigeria after Apartheid ended. She is brusque and difficult and the two women have never got along. Her husband dies and Hortensia decides to make changes to her house. Even though you sort of know where this novel is going it isn't as sentimental as you might expect. The reader hears their own stories and the events that have shaped them into the people they are when they were younger and faces the difficulties of being older and less able. Their age, stories and business success, adds layers to the background of South Africa's own story and creates sympathy for two women who are both difficult to like.… (más)
 
Denunciada
CarolKub | 21 reseñas más. | Sep 4, 2023 |
Leke was adopted as a baby and doesn’t remember his birth parents. He’s a sensitive sort, quiet, keeps to himself, and often seeks odd and unusual connections. He loves his adoptive parents but struggles with identity….

His story is told in alternating chapters that are mostly dated either around 1992 or 2012. The reader alternates between the story of his birth parents and how he came to be given up for adoption, and Leke living with his adopted parents.

Reading the first few chapters in this book, trying to follow several timelines (which are dated), I felt as if I was standing on moving ground for a while. But, I did acclimate eventually, and realized how much the art of the novel was providing a kind of background music for Leke’s story.

Beyond the shuffling of the timeline, this slim novel is an excellent and immersive story of one boy’s history and coming-of age in South Africa. Readers who are perceptive, patient and who read from the heart will best enjoy this novel.
… (más)
½
1 vota
Denunciada
avaland | May 27, 2022 |
"Il modo in cui l'amore poteva mutare così drasticamente continuava a confonderla. Perché una volta c'era stato davvero qualcosa, una cosa vera, precaria come solo l'amore può essere, ma tenera e dolce"

Apparentemente, e da come viene presentato, è un libro sulle differenze: due donne ultraottantenni, una bianca e una nera, una con famiglia e una senza, in un sobborgo residenziale ed esclusivo della Città del Capo contemporanea.

Per me invece è un libro su come le storie attraversano la Storia.

Hortensia e Marion sono vicine di casa da 20 anni, abitano in due ville attigue e si odiano. Da subito, da sempre.
Hortensia è nera, sposata con un bianco, senza essere riuscita ad avere figli ed è arrivata da benestante nel Sudafrica post apartheid, unica nera in un comprensorio di famiglie bianche e ha iniziato a odiare subito tutti. Perché lei viene da lontano, da una famiglia povera di Barbados, borsista discriminata nella swinging London degli anni ’60 che ha provato sulla propria pelle le difficoltà di un’integrazione solo teorica, una sorta di “Indovina chi viene a cena?” al femminile. Si afferma nella professione, si trasferisce col marito, dipendente di una multinazionale, dapprima in Nigeria e poi, per farlo morire con assistenza debita, in Sudafrica. Ritrovandosi sola.
Marion è bianca, figlia di ebrei lituani scappati dall’antisemitismo europeo degli anni ’30, lasciandosi tutto alle spalle e rinnegando tutto: Marion cresce non solo senza fratelli, ma anche senza nonni, zii e cugini e senza che si possano nominare. Senza storia. Una famiglia scappata da una segregazione, che si accomoda di fronte a quella che le viene presentata: Marion cresce pensando che l’apartheid sia “normale”, non vuole che i suoi figli giochino con la figlia della cameriera, e per le esigenze personali della cameriera compra a parte merce di qualità scadente; ma i figli crescono in una società già diversa, in una cultura del confronto, si interrogano, chiedono ragioni, più di quanto lei non abbia chiesto ai suoi genitori, la escludono dalle loro vite. Rimane vedova. Ritrovandosi sola.
Gli scherzi testamentari e finanziari in extremis dei loro mariti, più altre evenienze, obbligano Hortensia e Marion a entrare in contatto più profondamente di quanto non abbiano fatto nei 20 anni passati, a sostenersi vicendevolmente pur mal sopportandosi, a raccontare se stesse all’altra, a rivivere anni cruciali delle loro vite e dei loro matrimoni con il senso del (e col senno di) poi.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
ShanaPat | 21 reseñas más. | Jun 29, 2020 |
South Africa. Two women, elderly widows, both of whom had impressive careers in design fields. And they have hated each other for years. But circumstances bring them together, so they can both get what they want in the short term--but each has something the other cannot have.

Omotoso uses these women, Hortensia (black, from Barbados but raised in London, came to South Africa from Nigeria) and Marion (white, the daughter of Polish Jews who fled and abandoned their religion out of fear), as well as their community, to tell a story of modern South Africa. Of how people have been treated and how many still are, of how property rights are a knot of cheating that was legal when it occurred, of never knowing what others' dreams might be. Both women carry a lot of guilt/regret for very different reasons.

Omotoso was also born in Barbados (where her mother is from), and was raised in Nigeria, and has lived in South Africa for nearly twenty years.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
Dreesie | 21 reseñas más. | Jun 11, 2020 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
4
También por
3
Miembros
381
Popularidad
#63,387
Valoración
½ 3.7
Reseñas
23
ISBNs
25
Idiomas
4

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