"In Makokoba, a black township of Bulawayo, young Phephelaphi dreams of all the possibilities of life while the much older Fumbatha seeks to enfold her in his "one-room" love."
"Phephelaphi, living in Makokoba in the 1940s, is a young woman who believes unrealistically that her body and her life are her own to control."@en
"In een Zuid-Afrikaanse township in de jaren veertig probeert een jonge zwarte vrouw een zelfstandig leven op te bouwen."
"Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township, in the late l940s, the novel is an intensely bittersweet love story. When Fumbatha, a construction worker, meets the much younger Phephelaphi, he"wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him." He in turn fills her "with hope larger than memory." But Phephelaphi is not satisfied with their "one-room" love alone. The qualities that drew Fumbatha to her, her sense of independence and freedom, end up separating them. And the closely woven fabric of township life, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own. Vera exploits language to peel away the skin of public and private lives. In Butterfly Burning she captures the ebullience and the bitterness of township life, as well as the strength and courage of her unforgettable heroine."@en