Masande Ntshanga | |
|---|---|
 Ntshanga in 2021 | |
| Born | Masande Ngcali Ntshanga (1986-04-25)25 April 1986 (age 39) East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, editor, poet, publisher and lecturer |
| Nationality | South African |
| Education | University of Cape Town |
| Genre | Literary fiction,experimental literature,science fiction,poetry |
| Notable works | The Reactive,Triangulum |
| Notable awards | PEN International New Voices Award,Betty Trask Award |
Masande Ngcali Ntshanga (born 25 April 1986) is a South African novelist, short story writer, poet, editor and publisher.[1][2] He is the author of two novels,The Reactive (2014), which was published in five territories and won aBetty Trask Award in 2018,[3] andTriangulum (2019), for which he was nominated for aNommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African.[4][5] In 2020, Ntshanga released his third book,Native Life in the Third Millennium (2020), a collection of poetry and prose from his experimental press, Model See Media,[6] which was also well received, with critics praising it for its themes and use of language.[7][8] Ntshanga has delivered guest lectures at the Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts in Cape Town,[9] The Beeler Gallery in Columbus,[10] The Columbus College of Arts and Design,[11] The Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town,[12] and The SAE Institute for Creative Media in Johannesburg.[13] In 2020, he joined theRhodes University MA in Creative Writing Program as a part-time lecturer and took over the literary journal,New Contrast, becoming its first black editor since the magazine was established in 1960.[14][15] He now teaches at the Creative Writing Department atWits University.[16]
Ntshanga was born inEast London, in 1986, and spent his early childhood inMdantsane andBhisho, the capital of the formerCiskei.[17][18][19] TheBantustan, which would later become part of theEastern Cape, is a prominent feature in his fiction. In a 2020 interview witharts24,[2] when asked about the prevalence of "machine logic" and "homelands" in his work, and whether or not this was autobiographical, Ntshanga said:
I think all writing is autobiographical. That it emerges from the same biographical detail: how the author perceives and arranges their world. It’s true, though, machine logic and the homelands do inform how I perceive and arrange mine. I’m still investigating the cause behind this, but I suspect it might have to do with the fact that the homelands themselves were technologies of conquest. That I was born into a malfunctioning machine.
In 1992, after theBisho massacre, Ntshanga's family moved toKing William's Town, where he attended an English medium school for the first time.[20][21] Later, Ntshanga attended boarding school at St Gregory College, inEstcourt, where he became School Dux.[22] In 2004, he matriculated fromSt Charles College in Pietermaritzburg, where he'd begun to write, placing his first story in the South African counterculture journalLaugh It Off at eighteen.[23][24][25]
Ntshanga attended theUniversity of Cape Town, where he continued to write and publish short stories in local literary journals.[26][27] He completed a BA in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies, before enrolling for the university's MA in Creative Writing program, working under theMellon Mays Foundation.[28] He was awarded an NRF Freestanding Masters Scholarship and in the program, Ntshanga was supervised by the South African novelist and academic,Imraan Coovadia.
In his final year at the university, while working on his thesis,[29] Ntshanga wrote the short story "Space", which won the inauguralPEN International New Voices Award in 2013.[30] The judging panel includedSjón andAlain Mabanckou, amongst others, and the story was selected from a pool of PEN centres from across the world. Ntshanga flew toReykjavík with the other shortlisted writers, José Pablo Salas andClaire Battershill, where he received the award and $1,000 USD on September 11, 2013, during the 79th PEN International Annual Congress, which was being held in the city as part of the Reykjavík International Literary Festival. The Executive Vice-President of PEN South Africa,Margie Orford, said, “Masande is a rare talent and an assured and lyrical writer. It is wonderful that a young South African won this prestigious award.”[31] Ntshanga's short story drew the attention of Random House Struik, his South African publisher, and on returning home, he signed a book deal to develop his master's thesis into what became his debut novel,The Reactive.
The Reactive was published in 2014 by Random House Struik. Following three Cape Town friends as they get high and sell antiretroviral drugs on the black market, the novel was positively received, praised for the beauty of its language despite its "harrowing" subject matter.[32][33] In a review forAerodrome, Eckard Smuts wrote: "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."[34] In 2016, the novel was published in the United States byTwo Dollar Radio, and to promote it, Ntshanga went on a North American tour, beginning at theBrooklyn Book Festival inNew York City and concluding atCity Lights Bookstore inSan Francisco.[35][36] Reviewing the US edition forSlate, Marian Ryan described the novel as what would happen "ifJudd Apatow directedJesus' Son and set it inCape Town...The Reactive often teems with a beauty that seems to carry on in front of its glue-huffing wasters despite themselves."[37] The book was translated into Italian and German, and in 2018, it was awarded aBetty Trask Award, becoming the first South African publication to receive the accolade.[38][39]
Triangulum was published in 2019 byPenguin Random House South Africa,[40]Two Dollar Radio andJacaranda Books. Mixing science-fiction with philosophy and South African history, the multi-layered, multi-genre novel, with references ranging from theCiskei Bantustan toStanisław Lem andThe Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was positively received.[41] In a review forBooklist, Alexander Moran wrote: "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’s2666... 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."[42] InThe Sunday Times, referring to the novel's setting of early 2000s South Africa, Kavish Chetty wrote: "Ntshanga exhumes a generational experience that might otherwise have disappeared altogether, leaving behind only our unreliable memories to provide testimony of another epoch in the life of this country." In 2020,Triangulum was shortlisted for aNommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African.[5]
Native Life in the Third Millennium was published in 2020 by Model See Media, also known as MDL SEE, Ntshanga's experimental press, which he established during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.[43][44] It was released as a limited edition chapbook of 100 signed and numbered copies and distributed exclusively through independent South African bookstores. In the chapbook, a hybrid of interlinking poetry and prose, a philosopher, poet and programmer reflect on existence in millennial Africa. The book elaborates on Ntshanga's longstanding themes: addiction, mental illness, assimilation, technology, friendship, alienation and colonialism. In aBubblegum Club interview with the author, Nkgopoleng Moloi wrote: "Sometimes classified as urban fiction, science fiction, political fiction and ‘coming of age’ stories, Ntshanga’s work is difficult to contain and is often a dance of binaries inching us closer towards the frigid and boundless voids of the human condition."[45] ForOkayAfrica, Rofhiwa Maneta wrote: "Ntshanga's swirling prose poses philosophical questions about what it means to be alive, the different mechanisms we use to keep the heaviness of being at a remove, and how the freight of our colonial past reaches into the future."[46]
Novels
Poetry
Essays
Selected short stories
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Notes on USamson II" | 2023 | Ntshanga, Masande"Notes on USamson II"Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives Cape Town | ||
| "Quiet Earth Philosophy" | 2020 | Ntshanga, Masande."Quiet Earth Philosophy".MIT Technology Review.123 (6):80–87. Cambridge | ||
| "Teachers" | 2020 | Ntshanga, Masande "Teachers''[54]menelique1(3) Turin | ||
| "The Sleeping Illness" | 2019 | Ntshanga, Masande "The Sleeping Illness"[55]Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal No. 22. Los Angeles | ||
| "Remedies" | 2017 | Ntshanga, Masande "Remedies"[56]Berlin Quarterly 6: European Review of Culture1 (6) Berlin | ||
| "Space II" | 2016 | Ntshanga, Masande"Space II"The Daily Assortment of Astonishing Things: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2016 London | ||
| "Calls" | 2016 | Ntshanga, Masande "Calls"[57]n + 11 (25) New York City | ||
| "The Reactive" | 2016 | Ntshanga, Masande"The Reactive"The White Review London | ||
| "LT" | 2015 | Ntshanga, Masande"LT"VICE Toronto | ||
| "Space" | 2013 | Ntshanga, Masande"Space"PEN South Africa Cape Town |
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