BOOKS
LYNN JOFFE
and move out of it as quickly as the people who walk or run past you in an airport.” Adair is known for her novel In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot (2015), which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2005. It was published in Spanish in April this year. She previously practised as an attorney litigating on human rights issues and taught constitutional law at Wits. She works part time at the Wits University Writing Centre and is registered as a PhD student at the University of Pretoria.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WANDA B L AZARUS A NOVEL BY LYNN JOFFE MODJAJI BOOKS, 2020
Re-imagine the ancient mythological figure of the Wandering Jew as a female. She has no choice but to keep moving, accidentally cursed with immortality. This is the inspiration for The Gospel According to Wanda B Lazarus, a debut novel by Wits alumna Lynn Joffe (MA 2017). Conceived during Joffe’s Master’s in Creative Writing, it is described by the publishers as a “bold and wild ride through two thousand years of myth and mayhem in an outrageous serio-comic work of literary fiction”. Joffe is CEO of Creatrix, a multilingual storytelling agency. Her outrageous heroine, Wanda, embarks on a journey that criss-crosses ancient and modern worlds and slips in and out of many centuries. Wanda speaks in a voice spiced with Yiddishisms, mostly about sex, adventure and music. It is the force of her character that holds the novel together. Reviewers say it is “a unique and significant contribution to South African letters,” as well as “an antidote for the formulaic foolishness of prejudice and patriarchy”, but more importantly that “every page” brings a laugh.
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