Paperback Description:
From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, comes the complete collection of her multiple award-winning City of Kings trilogy, including The Theory of Flight, The History of Man, and The Quality of Mercy. "Perhaps the most monumental trilogy to come out of Southern Africa" (Afrocritik).
In The Theory of Flight, Ndlovu sketches decades of history in an unnamed Southern African nation through the story of Imogen "Genie" Zula Nyoni, who lies in a coma after battling a long illness. As loved ones struggle to come to terms with their impending loss, Ndlovu recounts the lives of Genie’s forebears from colonial occupation through the freedom struggle.
In The History of Man, Ndlovu takes readers on an excursion into the interiority of the colonizer. Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, finds himself unmoored by the end of his country’s civil war. His journey from boyhood to manhood, characterized by experiences of love, loss, and war, creates a trajectory marked by bloodshed.
The concluding volume, The Quality of Mercy, brings us into the world of Spokes Moloi, the first black chief inspector in the City of Kings. Moloi is tasked with investigating the possible murder of Emil Coetzee, the infamous head of the Organization of Domestic Affairs. In delving into the details surrounding Emil’s disappearance, Spokes grasps at one last chance to resolve a decades-old murder case that significantly shaped his life and the destiny of his nation.