Mphuthumi Ntabeni The Wanderers

Across countries and decades, The Wanderers weaves a captivating tapestry of human lives, exploring the enduring—and sometimes contradictory—duties of blood and country. Ruru’s father, a South African freedom fighter, was exiled to Tanzania before she was born, leaving Ruru and her mother to fend for themselves in the township they called home. So when a fatal bus accident claims her mother’s life, Ruru is adrift. Haunted by her mother’s absence, another loss sits heavy on Ruru’s heart: that of her father, who never returned to the family, or country, he claimed to love. When she learns of his passing, Ruru grieves for the man she never knew, and the answers she would never find. She seeks solace in Tanzania, where she strikes up an unlikely friendship with her father’s widow, a Rwandan refugee named Efuoa. Efuoa gifts Ruru her father’s journals, and as she reads, she begins to piece together the fragments of a complicated life of deep love, shifting identity, small triumphs and haunting disappointments.