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Shrouded Blessings

by Basil Diki

Shrouded Blessings is a tale of four people on a collision course. Naomi, a Xhosa schoolgirl and enchantress given to prostitution that counts the S.A Police Commissioner among her clientele, approaches Fr Bryn Flynn, an Irish priest at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Christ the King, in Johannesburg, for confession. But Fr Flynn is reeling from the consequences of a parishioner's botched abortion. To the Cathedral also comes Bonginkosi, inheritor of a business empire, to surrender a bloodthirsty and sexually abusive tokoloshe (goblin). As Naomi enjoys her daring escapades, Bonginkosi is catapulted into a maelstrom of spiritual journeys in frantic attempts to get rid of the menace.

Beginning in Johannesburg, the story unfolds with great drama and mysticism before a cabbalist in Jerusalem, a diviner in Nigeria, a Lama in the Samye Temple on the Himalayas in Tibet, a Disciplinary Committee of the Vatican, and finally before a Xhosa sangoma (diviner) in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. But will the Xhosa sangoma, a diviner in conflict with the Government and his community, a man threatening gods and desperate for the head of an albino, rid Bonginkosi of the goblin and himself of his newly found wife -Naomi? Down and trodden, is Naomi not being turned day-by-day into a creature that animates her worst fears - a tokoloshe?

ISBN 9789956616077 | 180 pages | 203 | 2010 | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | Paperback

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“This is a beautiful work of art. I have not seen anything quite like it before. Basile Diki’s extraordinary breadth of vocabulary and his ability to sustain our interest are quite rare in a play written in verse. This is a literary tour de force; a tantalising promise of more things to come from this author. I wish him well -  not that he’ll need my good wishes with such talent.”

Rosemary Ekosso, Author of The House of Falling Women

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