The Story of the Cannibal Woman

This new novel by the 2005 Hurston Wright Legacy winner is full of the wit, irony and mystery that she has become known for. Part murder mystery, part send-up of stereotypic expatriate communities of interracial, intercultural couples, this wickedly smart story centres on a black French Caribbean painter and her British college professor husband who have lived in the US, Japan and South Africa. Rosalie and her husband, Stephen, live in post-apartheid Capetown, a city where violent and petty crimes are familiar occurrences. This is the story of a husband who takes a night walk to buy a pack of cigarettes, and never returns. Not only is his widow left to cope with beginning a new life; she is obliged to solve the mystery of what appears, on the surface, to be a senseless murder.