Growing up in the sandy streets of Old Crossroads, Pumla Makeleni found books at the back of her shack where her oldest sister told stories of all the books she read. It’s in books that she found her purpose. She nursed an all-consuming, insatiable thirst for ‘more’. At first, she believed the ‘more’ would require a sizable capital outlay in the shape of big bucks (salary), a fancy abode, and a serious German-engineered jalopy to fit her ego. Little did she know that she’d have to paint walls and travel by public transport to satisfy the ‘more’. It was when she was humanising a township school by painting a classroom that she was stirred to write this debut novel. She wrote it to silence that nagging, haunting, niggling voice that questioned how many boys would make it out of that high school alive. One can see her writing as a natural progression considering that she’s been telling herself stories in her head all her life – now she’s sharing that voice with us.
