The Whale Caller: A Novel
by Zakes Mda
Publication Date: Oct 17, 2006
List Price: $18.00
Format: Paperback, 230 pages
Classification: Fiction
ISBN13: 9780312425876
Imprint: Picador
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
Parent Company: Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Paperback Description:
As Zakes Mda’s fifth novel opens, the seaside village of Hermanus is overrun with whale-watchers—foreign tourists determined to see whales in their natural habitat. But when the tourists have gone home, the whale caller lingers at the shoreline, wooing a whale he has named Sharisha with cries from a kelp horn. When Sharisha fails to appear for weeks on end, the whale caller frets like a jealous lover—oblivious to the fact that the town drunk, Saluni, a woman who wears a silk dress and red stiletto heels, is infatuated with him.The two misfits eventually fall in love. But each of them is ill equipped for romance, and their relationship suggests, in the words of The Washington Post, that "the deeper, darker concern here is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart."
As Zakes Mda’s fifth novel opens, the seaside village of Hermanus is overrun with whale-watchers—foreign tourists determined to see whales in their natural habitat. But when the tourists have gone home, the whale caller lingers at the shoreline, wooing a whale he has named Sharisha with cries from a kelp horn. When Sharisha fails to appear for weeks on end, the whale caller frets like a jealous lover—oblivious to the fact that the town drunk, Saluni, a woman who wears a silk dress and red stiletto heels, is infatuated with him.The two misfits eventually fall in love. But each of them is ill equipped for romance, and their relationship suggests, in the words of The Washington Post, that "the deeper, darker concern here is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart."