| October | |
| Language: | English |
| Published: | 2014 (The New Press) |
| Pages: | 239 (first edition, hardback) |
| Isbn: | 978-1-59558-962-0 |
| Isbn Note: | (first edition, hardback) |
| Dewey: | 823'914--dc23 |
| Congress: | PR9369.3.W53)28 |
October is a 2014 novel by Zoë Wicomb. Wicomb, who won a 2013 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, is originally from Namaqualand, South Africa, and is an emeritus professor at the University of Strathclyde.
October is the story of Mercia Murray, a professor in Glasgow, Scotland, who returns to Kliprand, Namaqualand in South Africa when her brother, Jake, writes her to come home and get his son, Nicky. The themes include homemaking, exile, return and race. Quadrapheme: 21st Century Literature has noted that October[1] is a story about homecoming, a story about home, a story about belonging, not-belonging, women and children, class and race and education, motherhood and fatherhood.[2]
Asked by Anna James to sum up the book in three words, Zoë Wicomb answered, "Home, deracination, family secrets."[3]
Allan Massie, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, wrote in The Scotsman: "Zoë Wicomb's latest novel is dense and demanding, but rewarding. It calls for careful reading, as it moves back and forward in time, and to and fro between Scotland and South Africa."[4] Kirkus Reviews commented: "Though the setup is dramatic, Wicomb's writing is patient and meditative [...] its closing pages are genuinely affecting, intensifying the overall mood of heartbreak. A carefully crafted, if at times overly austere, study of home and loss."[5]