A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more

Wan

By (author): Dawn Promislow

Shortlisted for the 2023 Fred Kerner Book Award

A Miramichi Reader Best Fiction of 2022

Wan is a masterpiece. This beautiful, painterly, sublime, and sonically exquisite novel by Dawn Promislow is a work of utter genius.” – Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things

Narrated in a completely distinctive and mesmerizing voice, Wan is the story of Jacqueline, a privileged artist in 1970s South Africa. After an anti-apartheid activist comes to hide in her garden house, Jacqueline’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel.

Written in gorgeous and spare prose, this exquisite debut novel grapples with questions of complicity and guilt, of privilege, and of the immeasurable value of art and of life.

AUTHOR

Dawn Promislow

Dawn Promislow was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. She left South Africa with her family in 1977 and lived in London, England, before returning to study English and French literature at the University of Cape Town. She has lived in Toronto since 1987, where she works in magazine journalism.


Reviews

Wan is a masterpiece. This beautiful, painterly, sublime, and sonically exquisite novel by Dawn Promislow is a work of utter genius.” – Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things

“A stunning, compelling read, Dawn Promislow’s first novel belongs to the literature of witness – an eloquent portrayal of a white South African woman in the apartheid era, one which speaks with a universal voice to our present moment. The author captures Jacqueline’s quiet but acute unease, as she and her husband negotiate a perilous world, the courage it asks of them, and the catastrophe that follows. This is riveting work, courageous and honest.” – Carole Giangrande, author of The Tender Birds

“A very still but articulate woman speaks with great precision about her privileged life in apartheid South Africa. But the stillness is an illusion. Beneath her calm voice, political pressure is building and sexual tension is rising. The atmosphere in this powerful novel is the literary equivalent of the highly charged atmosphere you feel before a major storm. I couldn’t put this book down.” – Antanas Sileika, author of Provisionally Yours

“This exquisite novel insists on being read at the pace of its narrator’s voice. An insistence I gave into like a warm spring, heated by the relentless tectonic shifts taking place beneath the surface.” – Darcie Friesen Hossack, Commonwealth Writers Prize shortlisted author of Mennonites Don’t Dance


Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×
There are no other resources for this book.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

240 Pages
8.00in * 5.50in * .80in
300.00gr

Published:

May 01, 2022

Publisher:

Freehand Books

ISBN:

9781988298993

Book Subjects:

FICTION / Women

Language:

eng

No author posts found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.

Other books by Dawn Promislow