Romance & Struggle Define Must-Read New Fiction of South Africa
Pretoria (PRWEB) August 09, 2013 -- Gubula’s new novel, There Are Only So Many Tomorrows, is about romance born in the intensely divisive and violent climate of South Africa under Afrikaans rule – when apartheid was a way of life and the white government gave away with one hand and took with the other. Jay Gubula revisits her country’s recent past to create a moving, realistic picture of how the most innocent of romances can turn into the most bitterly fought battle in the political climate of those times.
Two men in 1980s Pietermaritzburg are drawn to the same woman, Abigail “Abby” Lukhele. The intensity of their feelings for her are perhaps indicative of how native Africans felt under a regime that dispossessed them even as it exploited their country and their people. They represent differing perspectives within the political movements that professed the same intense love for their homeland. Historically, only one view would win out in the end, and the two men’s struggle for Abby’s heart becomes symbolic of the tragic, violence-fraught concerns in the destruction of apartheid rule and how South Africans became fully committed to fighting for the right to run their own country. Although Gubula tells a straightforward story, a narrative that displays a culture under great pressure to knuckle under white rule, the symbols and powerful emotional currents of her novel’s timeline cannot be ignored.
The two rivals quickly become each other’s nemesis in a society where resistance of any kind often invited executions, factional clashes, clandestine activity, treachery and entrapment. Young Abby unwittingly becomes the object of a dangerous obsession as the rivals, not content with displacing the other in her affections, play to ensure the other’s annihilation. None would foresee the theatre their deadly encounter would be staged on. It culminates in a clash that potentially destabilizes the entire region and, for one of them, leaves a lasting legacy of shattered hopes, broken dreams, and a life destroyed.
Beyond the bitter rivalry of Abby’s suitors, there lies Jay Gubula’s reality that politics in her country have been shaped by strong personalities, of heroes, of pretenders, of the many types of people that often make up the success stories behind heroic revolutions. Romance plus the well drawn truth in the lives that made up her people’s liberation makes There Are Only So Many Tomorrows a successful new work that defines current South African literature.
This book will be featured at the 2013 Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, on October 9 – 13, 2013.
For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to http://www.XlibrisPublishing.co.uk .
About the Author
A law graduate with two LL.M. degrees behind her name, Jay Gubula began writing in 2008, churning out two book manuscripts, several short stories, articles and poetry before she even gave any thought to getting published. Describing herself as a reformed social network junkie with no plans to visit rehab, and an armchair revolutionary out to buck the trend of current politically correct social norms, the author divides her time between weekly guitar lessons, full-time employment and being homemaker to husband Morris and their three children aged 23, 17 and 15 respectively. Home for her is Pretoria, South Africa.
There Are Only So Many Tomorrows * by Jay Gubula
Publication Date: April 5, 2013
Trade Paperback; £13.99; 336 pages; 978-1-4797-7524-8
Trade Hardback; £23.99; 336 pages; 978-1-4797-7525-5
ebook; £3.99; 978-1-4797-7526-2
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