The Scent of Bliss | General Fiction

Nthikeng Mohlele

The Scent of Bliss hints at a childhood memoir, as much as it is a love tale that explores human anguish and survival, of absurdities that define the human condition.

Manic depressive narrator Q is orphaned at a tender age of thirteen – grows to teach literature, and in the process courts an older woman. He is plunged into a series of unfulfilling and failed life choices, as he tries to find meaning to a life that seems destined for dead ends.

Set in imaginary Lumumbaville, this debut novel could very well be post-apartheid South Africa; an ambitious portrait that fuses death and history, social justice with the dogma of sexual and religious morality, premature loss of innocence, as well as the effects of State power on the lives of individuals.

It is an exceptionally strong debut by a writer who is sure to become one of South Africa’s foremost new novelists.