The Madonna of Excelsior

The background to Mda’s brilliant book is 1971 when nineteen citizens of Excelsior in the Free State were charged with breaking apartheid’s Immorality Act, which forbade sex between black and white. In an extraordinary alchemy of words into art, Mda tells the story of a family at the heart of the scandal. It is also a brilliant study of the inner workings of small-town South Africa, and the changes rural communities have undergone since 1994. Mda uses the paintings of renowned artist Father Frans Claerhout as windows into the world of the small Free State town. The brilliant colours and naive brushstrokes of the paintings are transformed into a vivid yet almost surrealistic fictionalisation of the intriguing events of the case