In Ways of Dying Zakes Mda's acclaimed first novel Toloki is a "professional mourner" in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa. Day after day he attends funerals in the townships dressed with dignity in a threadbare suit cape and battered top hat to comfort the grieving families of the victims of the city's crime racial hatred and crippling poverty. At a Christmas day funeral for a young boy Toloki is reunited with Noria a woman from his village. Together they help each other to heal the past and as their story interweaves with those of their acquaintances this elegant short novel provides a magical and painful picture of South Africa today.
