Triangulum

PRAISE FOR TRIANGULUM

"The violent and fascinating history of South Africa-from colonialism to apartheid, and the recent struggles to come to terms with this past-serves as a rich backdrop for this unsettling, enrapturing novel that brings to mind Roberto Bolano's 2666... a novel of incredible imagination that gradually unfurls into a wonderfully realized meditation on growing up, heritage, and the effects of technological progress on the world around us."

-Alexander Moran, Booklist

"In this modern coming-of-age tale, Masande Nsthanga... takes us on dystopic journey into the most suprising places, and also on a journey into the human soul haunted by the past, revolted by injustice and hungry for freedom."

-Ioana Danaila, The African Book Review

"Ntshanga has written a wonder of speculative fiction, with much to say about oppression, the onward march of technology and corporations, and the fate of the earth in the hands of human civilization. Grounded in a coming-of-age story and compelled by masterfully deployed elements of both history and science fiction, this novel is in a genre all its own. Triangulum is an astonishing puzzle of a book, one that I immediately wanted to reread in order to marvel at all of the interlocking pieces with a sharper eye."

-Kelsey O'Rourke, Literati Bookstore

"I think this was one of the best science fiction epics I've read in a while."

-Jacob Hoefer via Goodreads, bookseller at Labyrinth Books

"This new genre-bending novel with elements of science fiction covers a period of 40 years past and present in South Africa. In 2040, the South African National Space Agency receives a mysterious package containing a memoir and a set of digital recordings from an unnamed woman who claims the world will end in ten years."

-Layla Haidrani, Cosmopolitan, '32 new books by people of colour to get excited about in 2019'

"An inventive novel."

-Jennifer Platt, Sunday Times (South Africa), 'A look at the literature 2019 has in store'

A "Most Anticipated Book of 2019"

-John Madera, Big Other

PRAISE FOR MASANDE NTSHANGA'S DEBUT NOVEL, THE REACTIVE:

Winner of The Betty Trask Award, 2018

Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize Finalist

Etisalat Prize for Literature Longlist

A "Must-Read Book for June 2016."

-Flavorwire

A "Best Book of June 2016."

-Michael Schaub, 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."

-Nathan Goldman, 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."

-Tobias Carroll, 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."

-Jonathon Sturgeon, 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."

-David Schuman, 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."

-Dmitry Samarov, 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."

-Benjamin Woodard, 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...