Zakes Mda "may have a more central place in South Africa's literary and political spheres than any other novelist today" (The New York Times Magazine). A novelist and playwright, Zakes Mda has won every major South African literary prize. He is the author of six novels, among them Ways of Dying (winner of the M-Net Award for best novel and the Olive Schreiner Prize), The Heart of Redness (winner of the Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award for Fiction; a New York Times Notable Book; Best Book, Africa Regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize; winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Award), She Plays with the Darkness (winner of the Sanlam Literary Award for Best Unpublished Novel), The Madonna of Excelsior (a New York Times Book Review Summer Reading Selection and an American Library Association Notable Book), The Whale Caller, and, most recently, Cion. Born in 1948, he is a professor of creative writing at Ohio University and divides his time between South Africa and Athens, Ohio.