We are thrilled to be the US publisher for Sifiso Mzobe’s multi-award-winning novel Young Blood. This gripping coming-of-age/crime novel is set in the South African township of Umlazi and centers on Sipho, a teenager who finds himself spiraling deeper and deeper into the township’s criminal underworld. How far can he push his luck before there’s no turning back?
Sifiso recently sat down with Joanne Hichens for an interview with The Big Thrill Magazine about his work and the novel. If that interviewer’s name sounds familiar, it’s because Joanne can also be seen around Catalyst HQ (virtually, anyway) as the author of another one of our books— Divine Justice, which is also out now!
From their interview:
Sipho lives in the township of Umlazi, an informal settlement on the outskirts of the city of Durban. His brick home overlooks Power, a shanty town of tin structures. Did this truly South African setting—one of poverty and hardship—inspire the story? Or did you have Sipho in mind when you started writing?
When I started writing this story, the characters and setting were very crisp in my mind. The proximity of Power, the shanty section, and the more developed section consisting of brick houses where Sipho lives is what you see in most Black townships of South Africa. People flock to townships from rural areas so they can be near job opportunities as townships are closer to cities. Shanty sections in townships spring from that, and they just keep growing. It’s been like that since I was very young.
In Umlazi you find shanty sections, a few mansions, and a lot of four-room houses. Four-room houses were built by the apartheid government when they forcibly removed Black people from the cities. The term four-room is deceiving. It does not describe a house with four bedrooms—there are two small bedrooms, a small kitchen, a toilet, and another room. People from these different social classes co-exist in Umlazi Township.
Indeed, Young Blood is very much the story of Umlazi—one could describe the township as a character in and of itself. How did you bring it to life?
I witnessed the political civil war that ravaged Umlazi in the 1980s when I was a child. As a teenager I felt the palpable optimism that bubbled in Umlazi after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison at the dawn of the democratic South Africa. In my adult years I’m witnessing disillusion in my people as the promises made in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became our president remain unfulfilled.
