Zakes Mda is a South African and American-African Appalachian writer, painter, and music composer. He holds an MFA (Theater) and an MA (Telecommunications) from Ohio University, and a PhD from the University of Cape Town. He has been awarded several honorary doctorates, among others by the University of Cape Town and Dartmouth College. He has published 24 books, eleven of which are novels and the rest collections of plays, poetry and non-fiction. His works have been translated into 20 languages. They have won many awards in South Africa, the USA and Italy, including the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, Sanlam Prizes, The Pringle Award, the Sunday Times Literary Prize, the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award, Premio Narrativa Sud del Mondo, the University of Johannesburg Literary Prize and the American Library Association Notable Book. He is a recipient of the Ikhamanga Order in Silver, a national award of the South African government. His memoir titled Sometimes there is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012) was the New York Times Notable Book for 2012. His latest novel is The Zulus of New York (Penguin Random House Umuzi). He commutes between the USA, where he is Professor Emeritus at Ohio University, and South Africa, where he is Extraordinary Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape and a director of NeoZane, and animation film production company. He is also an Honorary Patron of the Market Theatre and the Jozi Book Fair.

In the timeless kingdom of Mapungubwe, the royal sculptor had two sons, Chata and Rendani. As they grew, so grew their rivalry?and their extraordinary talents. But while Rendani became a master carver of the animals that run in the wild hills and lush valleys of the land, Chata learned to carve fantastic beings from his dreams, creatures never before seen on the Earth. From this natural rivalry between brothers, Zakes Mda crafts an irresistibly rich fable of love and family. What makes the better art, perfect mimicry or inspiration? Who makes the better wife, a princess or a mysterious dancer? Ageless and contemporary, deceptive in its simplicity and mythical in its scope, The Sculptors of Mapungubwe encompasses all we know of love, envy, and the artist’s primal power to forge art from nature and nature into art. Mda’s newest novel will only strengthen his international reputation as one of the most trenchant voices of South Africa.