From the back:

"Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township of Bulawayo, in the late 1940s, the novel tells the story of Phephelaphi, who glows with vitality and a secret sense of her own freedom and independence. When she meets the much older Fumbatha, he fills her 'with hope larger than memory.' He, in turn, 'wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him.' But despite their genuine happiness, Phephelaphi is not satisfied with his 'one-room' love alone.

She is pulled toward the experience of other lives, the possibility of alternative futures. Her youth enables her to believe that she is in control of her own body, of her own destiny. But the closely woven fabric of Makokoba, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own.

Vera's language peels away the skin of public and private lives. In Butterfly Burning she conveys the harshness and hope, the joy and suffering of a woman's life in an African township."

I can't get anywhere with this book at the moment - it's too poetic for my working mummy's brain :D Off it goes to Samrana!

Received today thank you!

I read this in short extracts so that I could really take in the poetic language. The description of the environment is such an integral part of the story that the township itself can be described as a main character.

If you have found this book I hope you enjoy it. You might like to write a little about what you thought about it by making a Journal Entry (you can do this anonymously if you wish) and then pass it on, or leave for some other lucky reader to find…. If you make release notes then previous readers can get to know where you left it. Register with bookcrossing and then you can follow its journey….. Happy Reading.

No longer at the Urban Coffee Company, so marked as Travelling pending another journal entry.