Rom-com Zulu Wedding hit cinemas in April 2018, providing a glamourous, hilarious slice of flavourful escapism… and it was also the first South African film with a black female director and producer.īusani Dube gladly infused the book with new experiences and content not contained within the movie – this is the novelisation.Ģ8 year-old dancer/choreographer Lungile lives and thrives in New York City. Mess (book 5) by Dudu Busani-Dube is due out this November. Read this interview with JRB for more on her process and how the books came about.

The best introduction to the series comes from Busani-Dube herself. Each of the books is narrated by a woman drawn into the path of the brothers, and each is decidedly character-driven. The fourth instalment in the series, Iqunga, is out now.Ĭentred around eight Zulu brothers from Mbuba village in Greytown, KZN, the series begins with Hlomu the Wife and tells African love stories interspersed with tragedy and brutality. Indeed, it is unclear how publishers might have taken to the township-centric characters and tales from the Hlomu series but, fortunately, we don’t have to worry about it. She has said that she felt publishers might not understand the stories she was telling, and that she did not want to have to compromise her writing. Her decision to self-publish was made without even approaching publishing houses. Without fail, Busani-Dube’s books come directly from the experience of being a black woman in South Africa – they are stories that properly reflect their readers.īusani-Dube is a journalist by trade. Her characters are realistic and damaged, they come with baggage and they come with imperfection and insecurity – just like the rest of us. She describes her books as being about “broken men and the women who try to fix them”, and when asked what inspires here books, she has said: “People, just people and their realities.” Both of which, you’ll no doubt agree, are refreshingly pithy responses.īy and large, her books are positioned somewhat in defiance of the white-washed, absurdly photogenic and straightforward romance novel.

Best known for her Hlomu series – and for writing the novelisation of the 2018 film Zulu Wedding – Busani-Dube is a self-published novelist based in Johannesburg.

Dudu busani dube novels