Niq Mhlongo was born in Soweto, Johannesburg in 1973 and grew up under apartheid, South Africa’s institutionalised racial segregation under white minority rule. He graduated in political studies and African literature in 1996 and then studied law, but dropped out in his final year to become a writer instead.
Mhlongo entered the South African literary scene with his novel Dog Eat Dog (2004). He’s since published three more novels and three short story collections, and has edited three volumes of writing. Critics have called him “one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa’s post-apartheid literary scene”.
Mhlongo’s new novel, The City Is Mine, tells the story of Mangi, who seems to live a happy life with his fiancée, Aza, in Linden, a comfortable Johannesburg suburb. One day he discovers that Aza owns the house he’s been financing for eight years, a fact she has conveniently hidden from him. What follows is a messy break-up, made worse by Mangi losing his job. Thrown out of their home, he finds himself roaming Johannesburg’s streets, living from hand to mouth. That’s when he is forced to reinvent himself.
