Sunday Times Fiction Award, 2025 shortlist

Welcome to Vivo cemetery, run by old Mateus and his dog, God. Mateus’s eyes aren’t great these days, which is why he’s been burying bodies in the wrong graves, and also why, while out walking God, he trips over a young homeless girl named Novo. On a whim, Mateus decides to appoint her as his apprentice.

Armed with her tattered copy of The Savage Detectives, Novo is determined to reorganize the cemetery, but she will have to hurry: buried awry, divorced from their names, the ghosts of Vivo are accumulating, unable to proceed to the afterlife without knowing who they are. And someone—or something—is on the prowl, killing people and closing in on the one person who can make things right.

Erudite and wise, magical and quirky, South African writer Sven Axelrad’s fiction debut is an enchanting adventure that explores what our names mean to us and who we are without them.