Sigh, the Beloved Country is a saucy stew of literary performance that showcases essays, memoirs, the interview as an art form, profile as a form of theatrical set-piece, travelogues, political epistles and excursions into fantasy and fiction. It speaks to disparate genres with the same spirit as it addresses a country no longer at ease with itself.

At turns explosive, funny, irascible, memoiristic and epic in scope, it is also cosy and personal for its obsession with minutiae. Whether at home with subversive artists in cities’ back alleys, or enjoying himself at the invite-only black-tux balls, in Sigh, the Beloved Country, the culture critic morphs into a storyteller, eavesdropper and something of a travelling jester throughout the land to share stories of its prophets, beauty and tragic figures.

Madondo is at his finest tackling themes as disparate as RACE and its ‘isms’, the New Bourgeoisie, the idea of God, nascent black Punk Culture and Black Magic. Simultaneously a synopsis of and a critique of a country, Sigh, the Beloved Country comes out like a soul blast.

It also drops on the tenth anniversary of his debut, Hot Type, which was more concerned with the politics of glitz: what Madondo now refers to as ‘expensive crud’. With its inbuilt shrug, Sigh is less a fan-boy book enamoured with hipsters, and more of an adult lover and critic of a country, in conversation with its people: the so-called ordinary folks, the wealthy, the beautiful, the deranged and the truly genius. They are People of the South.

About the author

Bongani Madondo is a non-fiction writer, biographer and amateur film-maker. He spends time in Johannesburg, Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. His books include Hot Type: Artists, Icons & God-Figurines (2007) and I’m Not Your Weekend Special: Portraits on the Life+Style & Politics of Brenda Fassie (2014). Madondo has contributed monographs and lectures on the politics of style, film and rock & roll at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), in Warsaw, and at Haus Kulturen der Welt, in Berlin. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Transition, Internazaionale, Sunday Times Lifestyle, Rolling Stone, Noted, Man, True Love, Readers Digest, Marie Claire and Elle.

Sigh, the Beloved Country is published by Pan Macmillan South Africa