The Leper Compound will … remain with the reader long after the book has been closed.
— Stuart Dybek, author of I Sailed with Magellan
The Leper Compound
For Colleen, motherless at seven, isolated from her schizophrenic younger sister, illness unleashes the uncanny and essential of human identity. Growing into womanhood in Rhodesia’s final conflict-ridden years, she transgresses social, racial, and political boundaries in her search for connection. This masterly novel is a searing evocation of late-twentieth-century African life.
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781934137062
Paula Nangle was raised by missionaries in the US and southern Africa and now lives in Benton Harbor, Michigan. This is her first novel.
visit author page »Praise for The Leper Compound
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, Nobel Laureate for Literature and author of Slow Man
Nangle looks at the suffering body with a concentration that yields almost hallucinatory detail. What she writes is a stunning realism like no one else’s, explosively quiet, painful, and beautiful.
— Jaimy Gordon, author of Bogeywoman