"The Leper Compound succeeds remarkably in giving a sense of how, during the last years of white rule in southern Africa, the daily
experience of ordinary people was interfused with the larger historical drama."
—J.M. Coetzee, 2003 Nobel Laureate for Literature and author of Slow Man
"Paula Nangle writes prose that in its elegant yet raw intensity reminds me of the poetry of Sylvia Plath. The Leper Compound will
impress itself on the mind and remain with the reader long after the book has been closed."
—Stuart Dybek, 2007 MacArthur Fellow and
author of I Sailed with Magellan
—Jaimy Gordon, author of Bogeywoman
The psychic geography of conflict in southern Africa is revealed in this arresting, imaginative first novel. Placed in pre and post
independence Zimbabwe and South Africa, The Leper Compound is unified by a common thread of disease and the morbid reflections of
its narrator, Colleen. It depicts Colleen's experiences during the escalation of the war, and her sister's emerging schizophrenia,
as well as Colleen's relationship with a guerilla recruiter. The last half of the book, mainly set in Cape Town, where she is training
as a nurse, explores the contradictions of apartheid and how this affects Colleen, her friends and patients. The hospital is a frequent
setting, including a later chapter when her own child has heart surgery and she challenges her competence as a mother. The book ends
with the repossession of her father's farm after the land seizures.
Booksellers Online:
"Who among contemporary novelists has the courage to be
serious? ..Nangle looks at the suffering body with a concentration that yields
almost hallucinatory detail. What she
writes is a stunning realism like no one elses, explosively quiet, painful, and beautiful."