Kopano Matlwa

Kopano Matlwa was born in Pretoria (South Africa) in 1984. She has a medical degree but, with the resounding success of her debut novel Coconut (Sembra Llibres and Alpha Decay; in English Jacana Media), which received the European Union Literary Award and the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, she has become one of the continent’s most widely recognised young writers. Her work skilfully portrays class, race, and gender conflicts in post-apartheid South Africa and now, with her third novel Period Pain (published in Catalan as Florescència (Sembra Llibres) and also in Spanish by Alpha Decay), Matlwa has further consolidated her reputation as being one of Africa’s most captivating and essential literary representatives.