House of Margins

by Tlotlo Tsamaase, Tshego Khutsoane (Narrator), Didi Khunou (Narrator)

Serial the podcast meets The Other Black Girl in a haunted house, as a young African author disappears after being invited to an exclusive writing residency, and her sister is left only with a true crime podcast to help her uncover the truth about what really happened …

Anaya Sebeya is missing.

Before her disappearance, Anaya was a brilliant writer: a rising star. Invited to a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, an eerie colonial mansion on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, Anaya was supposed to craft the next great African literary masterpiece—and so were four other young, emerging writers, all competing for the grand prize. But Anaya never made it home.

When a sensationalized true crime podcast about Anaya emerges, claiming to reveal everything that happened at Günter Huis, her sister Ranewa is both skeptical and furious. But with each surreal episode, Ranewa begins to piece together a truth worse than she ever could have imagined …

At Günter Huis, Anaya’s nightmares consume her. Time slips away from her. Günter Huis inflicts distorted visions and terrible supernatural visitations, pushing Anaya to tell a story no one dares. But exorcising the house’s endless cycle of evil requires a sacrifice that neither Anaya nor her fellows are ready to make.

In House of Margins, award-winning Motswana author Tlotlo Tsamaase delivers a mesmerizing story of a young generation facing colonialism’s cultural legacy in Africa.

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Gothic

11 pages, Audiobook

First published May 26, 2026

Reviews

[Sadie Hartmann]

Title/Author: House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Format Read: Audiobook

Pub date: May 26, 2026

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Page Count: 432 pages/10 Hours and 23 Minutes

Affiliate Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7576/978164566...

Recommended for readers who enjoy: "A young African author disappears after being invited to an exclusive writing residency, and her sister is left only with a true crime podcast to help her uncover the truth about what really happened…."

-Missing/Murdered Women Mystery

-Fictionalized True Crime Podcasts

-Sister relationships

-Writing retreats/contest

-Mixed Media/Found Footage style storytelling: Texts/Letters/Podcasts/Articles

-Thought provoking social commentary on the book industry & racism/colonialism

-Ghosts/Spirit realm/Visions

__

Minor complaints:

-There are parts that drag a little--it's a long book full of twists and turns but there are some lulls in pace. I love the audiobook/narrator

Final recommendation: Günter Huis is a big house which and the home of a writing contest promising to shape young writers into stars with successful careers. Anaya Sebeya disappeared after being invited to a prestigious writing retreat.
Her sister, Ranewa, is trying to put together the pieces but there is a "Serial"-like podcast that is running a series using the mystery of Anaya Sebeya as an interactive mystery for folks to solve by becoming members of the patron at different tier levels. Through a back-for-forth timeline, the mystery unravels and the truth of the sinister motivations and history at these writing retreats at Günter Huis , is exposed. I absolutely devoured this audiobook. I love the narrator and the pace of the story. The social commentary pointed at the book industry and the colonialism of marginalized creators is so incisive and thought provoking. The podcast element was my favorite aspect of the storytelling. There are some very heavy themes, including physical abuse and sexual assault


Comps: The Ghost Writer by Julie Clark, The Writing Retreat Julia Bartz, Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

[BookishlySonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 In House of Margins we follow Anaya, an Afro-surrealist writer who has been chosen to attend a prestigious, competitive workshop with other writers where winning can lead to the launch of a successful career. But Anaya disappears, leaving her sister Ranewa to find out what happened.

The story weaves the themes of colonialism, racism in the publishing industry, and generational trauma into a haunted house tale that is equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking. Because the story is told through a podcast as well as multiple timelines it allows the reader to get a full overview of the story creating a sense of intimacy that can at times feel suffocating but necessary.

House of Margins is the epitome of literary horror and I loved it. The reading experience is very different and reminded me a bit of BHH in how it throws you into the deep end with cultural references and the use of the author’s native language. I am a HUGE fan of authors that do this because it forces me to engage with the text on an even deeper level because I do have to sometimes stop reading to look up background information. While it does make for a choppy reading experience at times, it’s more than made up for by the richness of the experience itself and the added depth it provides to the text.

I read this immersively and highly recommend it that way. Thank you to RBMedia for the ALC! Tshego Khutsoane, Didi Khunou, and Kate Liquorish were absolutely fantastic in their narration. The production was crisp and clear with no distracting mouth sounds. The integration of the podcast was seamless.

All opinions are my own.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)]

An experimental genre mashup with a lot to say about racism and ethnocentrism in the world of publishing, particularly looking at the legacy of colonization in Africa and treatment of African writers.

House of Margins is part gothic haunting, part true crime podcast, with a dash of magical realism, steeped in the author's own culture. A writer has gone missing after staying in a house for a prestigious fellowship. Her sister is trying to figure out what happened to her, and one of her fellow students is publishing a true-crime podcast detailing what happened. It's a bit of a slow-burn and the mixed-media format is unexpected and at times a little jarring, but I appreciate that this author isn't afraid to try things or make strong statements about issues she sees in the world of writing and publishing. I really loved her novel Womb City and this is quite different in terms of genre, but still interested in centering African women. I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

[Nina The Wandering Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

*whew* This was dark and heavy.

[Yvonne (It's All About Books) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished reading: May 12th 2026
DNF at 62% (268 pages)


*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and RB Media in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

REVIEW

WARNING: it's time for another unpopular opinion review!!

Right... I didn't expect this to happen to be honest. I have a weak spot for both books with a bookish angle, books with a podcast element and books by international authors exploring different cultures, so I truly thought that I had hit the jackpot with House Of Margins by Motswana author Tlotlo Tsamaase. The premise sounded absolutely fantastic with the writing residency, the South African setting and the haunted house vibe... On paper this should have been a perfect fit for me, but in the end sadly the complete opposite ended up being true. Below I'll try to explain why I had to make the difficult decision to turn House Of Margins into the second DNF of the year.

It's true that things started out well enough, and initially I quite enjoyed my time with House Of Margins. True, I didn't think the audiobook was the best fit for this mixed media format, but I could still look past that and enjoy the overall experience. BUT. Then shit got REALLY weird and explicit, and the story simply lost me. I don't always mind magical realism, explicit/graphic scenes and even weirdness, but in this case it was just WAY too much for me. I was expecting a haunted house vibe, and not whatever this story ended up being... To say that House Of Margins wasn't a right fit for me after all is probably the understatement of the century.

Like I said before, listening to the audiobook only made things worse for me. This has nothing to do with the narrators themselves (although they did speak extremely slow), but everything with the fact that it just didn't really work with the mixed media format of the plot. I also struggled with the many different words and phrases in different languages; as a philologist I usually love those elements in stories, but on audio it can get both confusing and ultimately tedious after a while when you can't understand what they are saying. The repetition of certain phrases (especially in the 'weird' chapters) was also highly annoying to me. I literally caught myself exclaiming out loud 'WTF am I listening to?!?!' multiple times, and I sadly don't mean that in a good way. In the end it simply was one weird/explicit/repetitive scene/phrase too many, and my ears and brain couldn't take it anymore.

I do have to say that there were parts of House Of Margins that I did like, including the part of the plot focusing on the writing residency, the missing sister, the podcast and the incorporation of African culture and history. I also think that I would have reacted differently if I had experienced this book in a different format... BUT. The fact is that once the bizarre took over the plot, the more 'normal' chapters weren't enough for me to convince myself to continue listening to this audiobook. I even tried increasing the speed to x2 (something I've never done before) to see if I could make it past the weird parts that way, but in the end it was simply too much to handle for me and I started wondering what was the point of torturing myself this way. True, part of me wanted to know what really happened to Anaya, but my brain wasn't willing to deal with more freaky scenes and simply short circuited.

I know that a lot of people do love this book, but I think that there is no doubt that House Of Margins and me weren't a good match despite the fact that it incorporates multiple favorite tropes/elements. If you think this book sounds like your cup of tea, I would strongly suggest sticking with a kindle/physical copy, because it is simply a better way to experience the mixed media format as well as the words/phrases in different languages that are incorporated into the text.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with an ARC!

“House of Margins” tells the story of Renewa, a young woman from Botswana, looking into the disappearance of her older sister Anaya who travelled to Cape Town to join a highly acclaimed writing residency - and hasn’t been seen in 18 months. At the same time, a surreal podcast telling the tale of Anaya’s last months at the residency is being uploaded, the narration sounding suspiciously like Anaya’s own voice.


This book throws you right into the thick of it. It is unrelenting in the imagines it conjures, making the reader face nauseating colonial violence against black women in blunt contrast with their mundane interactions with publicists in the literary industry telling them their stories aren’t approachable enough. It creates an atmosphere that resembles a fever nightmare rather than a fever dream, dealing with generational grief, rage, trauma and exploitation all while keeping the reader fully engaged through the creative use of mixed media and the surreal mystery of it all. A social horror and a brutal ghost story in one. I cannot recommend it enough!

[The Bookish Blonde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this novel was an immersive experience! I loved how the author wove news articles, podcast segments and interview transcripts throughout the book to help tell the story. Not sure it would be a great one to listen to because these nuances and uses of alternative storytelling tools could get lost in audio translation.

Anyway, "House of Margins" is a truly unique novel and one that defies any particular genre. Is it a horror? A mystery? Historical fiction? Ghost story? Expose? Magical realism? Yes, to all of the above.

The themes that the novel tackles are heavy -- racism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, sexism -- and the author does not hold back on describing the horrific violence and subsequent trauma imposed on African American women. This is a novel that will stick with you long after you turn the final page.

This book in five words: Impactful. Unique. Surreal. Traumatic. Necessary.

Thank you to GoodReads and the publisher for my giveaway copy!

[domsbookden · Rating 3 out of 5]

House of Margins is a unique haunted house story with so much to say but has such a hard time articulating it.

The writing, the competition dynamics, and the larger themes of the story were where the novel was at its best. The prose was well-done overall—descriptive yet concise, with realistic, streamlined dialogue. I especially loved the discussions of personal experiences, ethnic background, and historical context informing literature—a commentary on “own voices”—and racialized and nationalized gatekeeping within the publishing industry. I wish this had been the primary scope of the story, emphasized more through the interactions between the competition contestants, because those elements were the most compelling parts of the novel for me.

The podcast element and the heavy surrealism, however, were aspects that prevented me from fully engaging with the story. Incorporating podcasts into genre fiction is a very hot trend right now, but I’m not convinced it added anything meaningful to this story. Alongside the comments section inserts, real-world research excerpts, fragmented/poetic recitations, news articles, Anaya’s writings, dream sequences, and the constant shifts between all of these and Ranewa’s POV, the novel ran into a “too many things” issue. The central messaging gets lost in a barrage of mediums compiled with too little organization, distinction, or rhythm.

That problem becomes more noticeable when paired with the novel’s competing thematic focuses. House of Margins is trying to tackle cultural erasure, colonialism, and sexual racism against Black African women while also exploring racialized gatekeeping and prioritization of “own voices” in the publishing industry. The constant struggle to fully expand on all these themes ultimately ends up underserving both factions.

Haunted house stories are always a harder sell for me because they so often emphasize chaotic, surreal, and far-fetched occurrences that are either partially or completely disconnected from reality. While that style can effectively create a fever-dreamy, disorienting atmosphere that translates into a distressing nightmare for some readers, I usually come away from it feeling confused and frustrated. On occasion, this kind of surrealism can work for me when paired equally with intense character interactions and disturbing imagery within the physical confines of reality, but that balance was not present here. The horror predominately stems from ambiguity and unclear paranormal/spiritual activity, a storytelling method that is largely ineffective on me.

I came away from Tsamaase's pervious novel, Womb City, thinking it was “too dense and unfocused to reach its full potential, even though the creativity behind it was undeniable."; unfortunately, this also rings true for House of Margins.

I think readers who like social horror, like reading about authors, and loved both We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer and The Spite House by Johnny Compton will enjoy this read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Ashley]

DNF @ 20%

This is a DNF for now, despite it being an ARC. There is a good chance I might like this book quite a bit if I read it with my eyeballs instead of listening to the audio. I didn't realize this was going to be a wHaT iS rEaLiTy story, and those are hard for me to deal with without adding confusion due to the medium. Will hopefully come back to this soon in hard copy. Not rating.

[Erica | wittyreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars. House of Margins is exactly what I enjoy in a horror story. We have supernatural elements, lots of social commentary and historical components. Add in a writing theme, a podcast and a mystery and what more do I need? This book has so much to say that I know I'd benefit from another read. It's mysterious, creepy, unsettling and extremely relevant. It tackles subjects such as colonialism, racism, generational trauma, and more in a surreal manner. The commentary about the publishing industry was fantastic.

The audiobook narration was absolutely fantastic. It definitely enhanced the reading experience. Some parts were so poetic and really powerful. I really enjoyed the mixed media aspect but it was a little difficult in the beginning on audio to get used to the formatting. Once I understood what was going on, it was no longer an issue. I think pairing the audio with the physical copy for an immersive read would be perfection.

Thank you RBmedia for providing this audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Lorin (paperbackbish) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Erewhon Books for my free ARC of House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase — out now!

» READ IF YOU «
🏚️ want a gigantic, rotting colonial mansion setting
🎙️ are obsessed with the podcast-in-a-story component
🩸 love horror that does real political work, not just vibes

» SYNOPSIS «
Anaya was a rising literary star, selected for the prestigious Günter Fellowship—a residency that would pit her against other young African writers for a life-changing cash prize. But then, she never came home. A few years later, her sister stumbles onto a true-crime podcast that’s picking apart what happened at Günter Huis, and she starts piecing together a truth far stranger and darker than she expected.

» REVIEW «
The podcast framing is what makes this one for me, I loved it. Weaving the true-crime episodes directly into the narrative gives the whole book an extra layer of tension—it’s like you're watching Anaya's disappearance get consumed as social media content, which is its own kind of horror on top of the supernatural one. It's a smart structural choice and it never feels gimmicky or distracting.

Günter Huis itself is the standout, though. A group of young writers more or less locked into a nightmare mansion together, with the walls closing in (maybe literally?). That's exaaaactly the kind of claustrophobic dread I want from a haunted house book. And both narrators really brought the audiobook to life! Wonderful, melodic read—I highly recommend the audio. This was an engaging read from start to finish for me; it’s atmospheric, unsettling, and has some serious things to say underneath all the paranormal.

» RATING «
🫥 I'm Disappearing 🫥

» READ-A-LIKES «
• Flowers For the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Us (movie)
• The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

[Ярослава]

ARC provided by the Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

A young woman descends into the dark underworld of the local literary culture (among other things) to retrieve her sister who was selected for a prestigious literary residency for African women writers only to disappear without a trace. The residency and the prize are roughly based on the Caine Prize, or at least the criticism leveled against both happen to coincide:

I know what wins the Günter Prize. The stories themselves are always pandering in their portrayals of an African country. The winning writers usually have a tragic background story— violence, poverty, oppression. That’s what’s expected of African writers, as if the continent’s a monolith. The only thing I could use is that I’m bisexual.

In other words, the novel combines an investigation where you have to navigate layers of texts in various media, including true crime podcasts, and interrogate which stories are seen as trustworthy; an Orpheus and Eurydice type of situation, but focused on sisterhood and all the complicated feelings that may come with it; and treatises about the politics of literary representation of minoritized cultures, in a magical realist packaging. I liked a good 2/3 of it, the parts that can roughly be described as metafiction. The true crime podcast stylization is ruthlessly hilarious, the way author's public image is curated and massaged for easier consumption is unsettling, and descriptions of the principles guiding the literary representation of African cultures to make them palatable to international audiences are sharp and heartbreaking. What needs to be italicized as an unfamiliar foreign term or just excised and erased for the sake of readability (that is, who is enshrined as the target audience) is a political choice:

“Don’t you think Anglophonic authors’ books were inaccessible to us too? ... But we just got on with it. Still read it, still enjoyed their books ... You need to interrogate why you write the way you do and what sacrifice you commit to serve a certain audience.”

Trigger warnings and defining what might be too much is a political choice, and, although I'm from a different culture and from a different continent, I've experienced this pressure to make your pain polite and palatable, and I identify with this exasperated rant so. fucking. much.:

We are daily triggered by our history, haunted by the ghosts of history, and the world puts no content warnings to protect us from what we live every day. I want to curl up on the floor and cry this pain out, to feel warm arms hug me and a voice telling me that I’m not too much, that my pain is not too much, that my history is not too much. [...] I won’t cut ‘these violent gory scenes’ that did happen not so long ago. The world wants us to act as if our pain never existed, doesn’t exist. But this is what happened, and I want people to know.”

(I mean, in parts it does read like an essay stuck in the middle of a fiction text, but I did find it invigorating; not necessarily everybody's cup of tea though.)

I struggled a lot with the magical realist subplot though. Some parts of it felt too on the nose (like the writer losing her language and skin color after she conforms to other literary norms), too straightforward. The house where the residency is held happens to be a portal opening onto various tragic historical periods, giving writers access to what had otherwise been suppressed: “There are voices and stories that were unable to be preserved, documented, the silence is screaming in your present life. Writing revives the dead, it summons history!” If that's your jam, you will probably enjoy the book, so check it out! If not, it might be a problem for you. The book itself tries to preempt this criticism: the literary mentor who is this parody figure tries to goad the protagonist into dropping the non-realist parts of her writing (“If you stop focusing on this magical element, you will be onto something.”), and the reader is supposed to condemn that. That said, coming from a culture rife with suppressed pages, where authors are prone to this trope (as well as being semi-knowledgeable in several more cultures with similar situations), I can say with confidence that my distrust for the trope is universal across cultural and geographical boundaries. I don't find the idea that the suppressed past in its unmediated form might be available through some extra-rational means narratively exciting. Erasures and silences are an integral part of history, our identities are informed by physical and epistemic violence, forgetting is no less revealing than remembering, and disregarding all that is somewhat suspect. Again, if you happen to like the trope, and many do, this is a book for you.

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where is home? I ask.
Blood leaks down the sides of my face, cold and wretched with pain. Home is Botswana. Botswana is my body.

A surreal blend of magical realism and social horror, House of Margins explores the effects of colonization in South Africa through the lens of a group of young women attending a writing residency at a colonial Cape Town mansion known as Günter Huis. One of those women, Anaya Sebeya, disappeared right before the announcement of the prestigious Günter Prize. Now, 18 months later, another woman who was at the residency with Anaya has released a podcast detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. With each episode’s release, Anaya’s sister Ranewa finds herself spiraling further and further into the mystery of Anaya’s vanishing, in danger of becoming consumed by it entirely.

House of Margins is a fever dream of a book that I occasionally found difficult to follow, especially in audio form. The audiobook is incredibly well-read and -produced (I loved the narrators), but it was easy to get lost especially when the narrative veered into particularly surreal territory. Although I wasn’t always certain what was going on, I did understand and respect Tlotlo Tsamaase’s intent.

Nothing about this book is easy; the characters are complex, the mechanics of the haunted house are convoluted, and the plot is densely layered with tragedy and trauma, both in the far reaches of the past and in the present. It delves deeply and darkly into the history of Botswana during the time of its colonization, particularly the treatment of Botswanan women. It explores generational trauma, the eradication of cultural identity, the fundamental racism of the publishing industry, exploitation, and the plight of marginalized artists. It’s heavy and bleak, and although it may seem like a haunted house story on the surface, the horrors it describes are all too real.

Tsamaase’s writing is lyrical and mesmerizing, the kind that draws you in and holds you in thrall. It’s the kind of prose that entrances you even as it’s describing horrors, even as the narrative becomes twisted and tangled and difficult to follow. Although (and because) I found House of Margins somewhat obscure in its execution, I can’t wait to read more of Tsamaase’s work. Thank you to RBmedia and Erewhon Books for the complimentary reading opportunity.

[Ladz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Content warnings: Trauma related to colonialism and South African apartheid, rape, substance use and abuse, loss of a loved one, racism, xenophobia

The experimental nature of this book really worked for me. It's got everything: an unreliable narrator, a podcast, dream sequences, and reckoning with cross-cultural and erased legacies. Anaya Sebeya goes missing and the only clues left behind for her sister is a podcast that allegedly collects Anaya's writings and depicts her time at the exclusive Günter Huis writing residency.

What really struck me is a depiction of the turmoil and responsibility that comes with bringing to page specific historical traumas and what it takes to mold it for an audience for whom its denial keeps them in power. The tensions between the writer, the inspiration, and the gatekeepers took my breath away in between some genuine scares. Nothing is as it seems, and there are several sequences that I found myself rereading because of how well they clicked into other information and facts shared in the podcast.

Engaging and unsettling, highly recommending this one if you enjoy institutional and gothic horror.

[Hannah 📚📚 · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

Her books are so odd😭! I felt the same way about womb city when i finished i was between 4-5 but I love her brain. the middle had me a little confused same with her other book but I love fever dream books and it was later explained ENOUGH for me. I do think reading this myself would’ve helped but I got the audio arc from Libro FM so thank you to them. The way she conveys her messages are so interesting. The whole premise of this story mixed with generational trauma, religion, etc…. she is TOOOOOOOO TEA!!! I understand that her books aren’t for everyone….. but me??? Baby GIMMIE 14 OF EM.

If you decided to read this books because of me and don’t enjoy and/or understand it just know I warned you😭.

[The Blog Without a Face]

Influencer Exorcism, Premium Tier
BWAF SINISTER SELECTION

TL;DR: Tlotlo Tsamaase’s House of Margins is a furious, restless standout, part revenge horror, part media autopsy, part haunted house built from theft and entitlement. It claws at identity and voice until the page feels alive, then turns true-crime consumption into a weapon. Strange with purpose, razor-smart, and impossible to forget.

The house squats on the slope of Devil’s Peak and it is a Cape Dutch farmhouse and a colonial inheritance and a publishing imprint and a digestive organ. It calls itself Huis. It wants women. Not just any women. Black women with manuscripts in them, women whose voices can be siphoned and pressed and bottled like wine for a foreign market, women whose disappearances will sell well as a podcast. Anaya Sebeya, twenty-five, broke, unpublished, Motswana, comes for the prize money. The prize money was always meant for the house.

Tsamaase has built her novel out of fellowship paperwork and Patreon tiers and audio waveforms and the strict whitespace of poems, and the hauntedness is the form. The true-crime podcast that frames the book, hosted by Michele Visser, white South African cofellow and self-appointed chronicler of Anaya’s vanishing, comes with tip jars and an Investigator subscription tier that promises access to the interrogation footage. Tsamaase reproduces all of it. The pages with the screenshots have the look of evidence in a trial nobody is going to convene.

Inside this scaffolding the prose is two things at once. It is the voice of a young Motswana writer, contemporary and slangy and conversant in Setswana code-switching, the kind of first-person interior that knows what bo rakgadi say about jealous neighbors and tells you so without the courtesy of a glossary. It is also a translation engine for older violences. Tsamaase will set you down at the breakfast table for a workshop critique and turn the page on a scene of colonial atrocity from the eighteen hundreds without a chapter break, without a transitional sentence, without permission. The horror is layered through time the way sediment is layered through rock. You read one stratum and the older one bleeds up.

Tsamaase trained as an architect at the University of Botswana before earning an MFA at Chapman, and you can feel the architect in every page of Huis, in the louvered movables and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that conceals a sunroom and the en-suite bathroom whose panel slides like a stage trick. She is by now a substantial writer. A Caine Prize finalist for “Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition).” Joint winner of the 2021 Nommo for “Behind Our Irises.” Lambda finalist for the novella The Silence of the Wilting Skin. Author of the cyberpunk body horror Womb City, which finalled for the Locus and the Ignyte. The first Motswana writer ever to win a Nommo. She has been working this seam for years. The body as contested architecture, the city as a mechanism for consuming women, the house as a biographical organ. House of Margins reads like the room where everything she has been doing finally consents to share a wall.

The mechanics of how the book frightens are not the mechanics of a haunting in the usual sense. There is a creature in the bed at one point. Bodies hang from a rootless tree at another. There is a skin that whitens in patches like a Rorschach blot working its way north. But the deepest dread is editorial. It is in Anouk Rijks behind a glass desk telling Anaya that her depiction of colonial rape needs a trigger warning and probably some scenes cut. It is in Katja Günter explaining, languid on a couch at six in the morning, that death is indiscriminate and so is publishing. It is in the maid in the pale green uniform whose name nobody asks. The supernatural in the book is real and rendered with a craftsman’s confidence, but the supernatural is the diagnostic instrument and not the disease. The disease is the room itself.

A book this ambitious cannot be all bone, and there is some fat. The cosmology of Huis occasionally narrates itself out loud, ghostwomen explaining how possession works to a newly arrived victim, and the explanation drains mystery from a system that ran on mystery. The middle third has a stretch where Anaya’s time-slippage encounters with the matriarchal ghost Yanano begin to plateau before a single industry meeting cuts through them like a hot wire. Some of the satirical artifacts, the Patreon poll widgets and giveaway copy, work better as ideas than as paragraphs. The book wants you to feel suffocated and at moments you simply feel briefed.

These are nicks. The book holds. What you carry out of House of Margins is not a creature or a chase but a system, fully diagrammed. A residency that is a feeding ground. A podcast that is a meal. A house with rooms enough to lodge a few generations of women who could not be allowed to keep their own voices. Tsamaase has written the haunting that publishing has always been, and she has written it without flinching at any seam, including the seam where the writing of this very book becomes part of the system she is anatomizing. The book ends on a scene you will not soon forget, of a different room and a different hostess and a clean horizon, and the final image is a small one and very still, and it does what the best horror endings do. It does not tell you the disease is over. It tells you the disease has moved.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars--I liked the book. My first Motswana author!

This is surreal and dreamy, but isn't afraid to tackle big issues like colonial violence, sexual violence, and ancestral trauma. It will be divisive--the book has an experimental style that might drive off some readers. But I enjoyed the story of a women trying to rescue her sister from a house that is more than a house.

[Eve & Rye · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Review copy courtesy of RBmedia, Tlotlo Tsamaase, and NetGalley.)

4⭐

The impotent rage I felt while reading this book left me exhausted.

I felt helpless watching Mich, a white woman, blatantly profit off Anaya, a Black woman, and her disappearance. With each podcast episode, a new layer of audacity unfolded: membership tiers, comment sections, Discord servers, and paywalled information about the case. Mich blocked Anaya’s family and threatened them with lawyers, all while using AI to “recreate” Anaya’s story in a digital voice functionally indistinguishable from Anaya’s own.

Week after week, this bitch introduced “Ana,” a nickname multiple white people in the story use for Anaya despite being told, in no uncertain terms, not to. (This was even included MULTIPLE TIMES in the podcast itself!) Anaya says, “Being ‘Ana’ felt like chemically relaxing my entire identity.”

Just like a drop of water, over and over, can cut stone, a microaggression committed repeatedly is no longer micro.

House of Margins is the most searing book about race, extraction, and colonial violence I’ve ever read. At times, it’s confusing and deliberately opaque. At others, it’s direct and blistering. Mich’s assault on Anaya drains her color, ruins her hair, severs her from her native Setswana, and leaves her with Afrikaans, the colonizer’s language. It could not be any more straightforward: Mich is desperate to consume Anaya’s Blackness for her own writing.

Rape is a powerful and unavoidable theme in this story, given the history of the spirits in Hais. For one night, Anaya is forced to live in the body of a pregnant woman who was raped and murdered by South African soldiers. She documents these experiences unflinchingly in her manuscript, and her writing mentor Anouk (oh, Anouk, do I have thoughts—but not enough space to write—about YOU.) says, “Isn’t this a little much? Can you put a trigger warning on this? Or better yet, cut some of these scenes out?”

I wanted to scream.

This book is a brutal exploration of generational trauma. I’ve read several books this year about inherited pain, but anything that came before House of Margins now feels tame by comparison. The trauma here is so vast and monstrous that some readers may skim past it simply because that enormity almost becomes abstraction.

Even Anaya says she wishes she could go back to ignorance:

“I’m so tired of hearing about this systemic oppression, the racism, the spiritual warfare-the politicization of our bodies and past, all these grand scholarly speeches of Black consciousness, when it’s doing nothing to free me from all this torture. Knowing what all this means doesn’t save me. Doesn’t heal me. So, what if it’s colonialism? I want it to stop. I want to be free. [...] It was nice living an ignorant life. It was nice not knowing what happened to my people-it was nice to not know, because knowing is tearing me apart.”

I don’t know how I feel about the ending. It wasn’t “wrong,” certainly. But I hate when an innocent woman in the present is forced to sacrifice herself for the sins of her ancestors. (Also, really, why is it never a dude doing the sacrificing?) I appreciate the force of the message and the craft the author put into it. It deserves to be on the page. It just fucking burns me up inside.

And as for Mich. She FAFO’d and ends up with her spirit bled from her body and thrown into Hais to suffer violation, agony, and death repeatedly for all eternity. You wanted “the Black experience” to enhance your writing, Mich, well, here we are.

But I still wanted to see her suffer socially. I wanted to see her outcast by her peers. I wanted to see her fail spectacularly on the world stage. It isn’t that she’s less deserving of eternal violence; it’s that none of these women should have been subjected to eternal violence.

Audio-Specific 🎧: 10 Hours, 23 Minutes. Didi Khunou, Tshego Khutsoane, and Kate Liquorish bring powerhouse performances to these roles. Khunou’s portrayal of Anaya is haunting. She plays with volume in a way that sent chills down my spine, sometimes dropping into a whisper so intimate it felt like the ghosts were right behind me. Khutsoane’s deeper tones fit Ranewa perfectly, carrying understated but devastating emotion. You can hear Ranewa’s anger, despair, and the exact moment she has no more fucks to give. Liquorish gives great insidious villain. A cloying kind of sweet; a false ally who genuinely believes her own narrative. All three performances fucked me up in the best way.

In print, the text during the podcast indicates “upbeat music” or “theme music” where appropriate, but instead of including actual snippets of music in the audio, those cues are read out loud. It would have been such a simple addition, and could have made those sections feel more immersive.

📌 TL;DR: A devastating speculative novel about appropriation, generational trauma, extraction, feminine burden, authenticity, and spiritual and physical violence. It is not a happy story. It is not a hopeful story. I can’t tell you whether you should read it, but I’m glad I did.

[Keely Kovacevic · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was beautiful prose and a confusing as all heck story. I don’t know if it was because it was an audiobook or just because it was written in a way that you weren’t mean to know what was happening, but I was confused a solid 90% of the time and the other 10% was just the intro and outro of a podcast.

The writing was beautiful. The story was a cluster.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Krystelle (based on the novel by Stephen King) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I found this to be a really interesting horror novel, and it’s got an awful lot of layers to go through. I think that it’s one that needs to sit for a while once it’s read, and I’ve held off a while on my review solely for the purpose of making sure that I cover as much as I can.

First of all, the characters I feel were very strong. You learn a lot about all of them, but vitally for this particular book, they are conduits for the action itself. You find out more so theses from them as opposed to getting to know them as people, and that has power in and of itself. While this is usually a defect, I think it made the story all the stronger in this instance. It is definitely a book to be read as a metaphor as opposed to a novel, and I think it more than anchors itself in that.

In terms of what it had to say, I think it was incredibly powerful. How much the western world fetishises, appropriates, and sanitises literature from non-western countries is a topic not often covered, and it really is a horror story in and of itself. There’s a lot of topical material to be covered across that, and I found this book did it masterfully.

I really enjoyed the way that the podcast episodes were included as well in the story, and I felt there was that excellent extra layer of true crime and exploitation. This is another thing that people have built empires through, and it’s something that sits uneasily. Not to mention the themes regarding colonialism, traditional medicine, and South Africa- there’s just so much to unpack.

This was a very interesting concept, and while I do think that there were some threads that could have been tugged harder and the ending could have been tighter, I applaud the author for doing something new, interesting, and (most importantly) thought provoking.

[Juli Rahel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good book about books, a book that deals with the intricacies of not just writing but also publishing, for whom we're writing, what kind of stories we can or should tell, and more. In House of Margins Tlotlo Tsamaase does exactly that while also engaging with the haunted house, racism, colonialism, loss, sisterhood, faith, and more. While not all of it worked entirely for me, this was a very interesting and good read. Thanks to Erewhon Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A novel that is, in large part, a critique of not just racism but specifically also racism within the publishing industry, which asks African authors to adjust their writing, efface themselves and their languages, remove uncomfortable topics, etc. can be a little difficult to critique or review. I've been thinking of how to write this review because, in a way, House of Margins itself preempts or addresses what could be potential points of criticism from readers like myself (white, anglophone/European). The feedback Anaya gets, for example, to remove the Motswana from her writing because international readers won't understand it, is something I could mention in this review, since I don't speak Motswana and therefore also didn't understand the phrases Tsamaase uses throughout. I did enjoy the Motswana, however, and I also did enjoy how Tsamaase moves in this meta-fictional book. One of the reasons that I enjoy writing book reviews is that it encourages me to read beyond my own comfort zone and House of Margins is, in many ways, outside of my comfort zone. Despite being half-Dutch, I'm not as informed on Dutch colonialism and imperialism in Africa as I should be. Despite reading a lot and engaging with the publishing industry in various ways, I don't necessarily have the insight I should when it comes to the barriers thrown up for non-white authors. In this book, Tlotlo Tamaase made me confront these aspects, as well as what I expect of a narrative. I don't know if House of Margins will work for everyone and I don't even know if all of it worked for me, but I did find it very intriguing and informative, as well as gripping.

House of Margins is the story of two sisters, Anaya and Ranewa, but it is also the story of the suffering of African women and the story of the impenetrability of the publishing industry. Told through different mediums and in a style that borrows from surrealism and magical realism, it is no straightforward read. Anaya went missing a year ago on the evening of the the winner announcement of the Günther Huis writing competition. Now, a year later, one of the other competitors, the only white woman there, is releasing a podcast about it all which seems to appropriate Anaya's voice, while her sister, Ranewa, is still deeply impacted by her loss. When Anaya's phone suddenly appears to Ranewa, containing not just the podcast but also seemingly lost episodes by Anaya herself, Ranewa decides to try and find her sister, come what may. What unfolds is a story about writing and art, about publishing, about appropriating voices, about the horrors of slavery and imperialism, and about sisterhood. I recently ranted (a little) about a different book where I felt that the violence and horror served no clear purpose. That is not the case with House of Margins. While there is violence and horror that is difficult to face, these things are there for clear narrative and thematic reasons.

I read a part of Tlotlo Tsamaase's previous book, Womb City, and while I really enjoyed much of it, there was a point about halfway through where I had to put it down. I haven't come back to it since, but reading House of Margins has encouraged me to go back to it. There is something confronting about Tsamaase's writing. It's not that the tone is confrontational or that the stories are too out there, or anything like that, but as I mentioned at the top, reading Tsamaase's work really reminds me how much of my reading is still very white and Europe-focused. I have the same experience when reading, for example, Korean or Japanese literature, which makes me realise how much my expectations of what a book is like and how it might tell a story is shaped by Western literary expectations. In reading House of Margins I really liked how Tsamaase crafted her story, how her sentences were balanced between short and punchy on the one hand, and magical and surreal on the other. I also like how she builds the thoughts of her characters and unravels, slowly but surely, the complexities of their lived realities. The mix of media, from podcast episodes to different kinds of writing, was really interesting although I can imagine that perhaps it won't work for all readers. Overall, I had a really good time reading House of Margins and walked away with a lot to think about and a desire to both go back to Womb City and read more by Tsamaase in the future!

If my rating scale was different I'd probably give this 4,5 because I really like what Tsamaase does in House of Margins. It is a difficult and painful story she is telling, but she does it in a way that is not just necessary and important but also interesting from a literary craft perspective.

URL: https://universeinwords.blogspot.com/...

[Jae Xuân · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded up to 3 stars

Thank you RBMedia, Netgalley and the author for this advance copy.

It pains me to write this review. When I tell you… I had to force myself to finish this book 😔 I’m an immigrant person of color myself, whose first language is not English, so I want to support writers like Tsamaase.

The concept is really incredible. But the author’s execution is truly lacking. The writing is so over the top. In nearly every single paragraph, she says the same thing multiple times. If repetition as a literary device is used intentionally, it has real impact. But it has to be used wisely. Authors need to trust that readers can understand subtlety.

An example:

“A loose form pulls around me and disintegrates from my body in a steady rhythm. My soul wants to follow suit and it is this that wakes me. My soul trying to flee.”

Well yes, you said it disintegrates, and your soul follows. But I guess telling me your soul is fleeing (which is the same thing), doesn’t hurt, I guess.

A few sentences later:

“A thought rises within me. Not my thought, someone else's thought, intruding me, trapped in my mind.”

What rises within you? I didn’t catch it. A thought? And it rises? Intrudes? Is trapped? Where? In your mind?

Ahhh! This happens MULTIPLE times on EACH page. So often, I wanted to toss my phone across the room. But I broke my case recently and I can’t afford to do that right now, so I had to refrain. You get the idea tho!!!

At first, I thought there was a translation issue. But I can’t find any information that this wasn’t originally written in English. Even then, I GET why she's writing in English. It’s so she can appeal to a wider audience, because British and U.S. imperialism are the reasons so many readers have to know English and most of the global publishing world’s money is in English-language literature. The meta-ness of this is not lost upon me!! It sucks!

I also know how important it is to have more African authors tell their own stories. Black diasporic literature is mainly made up of authors based in the U.S. and U.K. Let’s understand that Black voices are not a monolith, so we need diversity when it comes to diaspora. Even within the wide umbrella of African lit, very few of those stories are from Motswana writers.

Lastly, we don’t need to be over-explained the plot, the imagery, the messaging, the thesis of the story. Please respect us enough to let us figure it out for ourselves. It made me feel like this book was for (mainly white) readers who are new to reading about racism, and need to be hand-held.

So, truly this would have been 2 stars for me, but I am rounding up to 3. I still want to support Tsamaase and authors like her, and I respect that she is using her craft to shine a light on the injustice of anti-Blackness and misogynoir, particularly in publishing. Literary horror should reflect the horrors of the world. I am okay with accepting that this was a difference in preference, and I would still rather champion works that are trying to make a statement, than horror for the sake of just getting a scare. This book was not for me, but maybe it will work for other readers. I will keep rooting for Tsamaase and am genuinely grateful for her perspective.

House of Margins is out on Tuesday, May 26th.

[Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you so much to LibroFM for the gifted ALC - all opinions are my own.

House of Margins is a sharp, transformative horror highlighting the atrocities of colonization and the outright theft/destruction of culture by those that stand to benefit.

We follow Renewa, a Botswanan woman investigating her sister‘s disappearance from Günter Huis, a colonial mansion located outside of Cape Town. Anaya was at Günter Huis by invitation as part of an exclusive writing residency for promising African writers. A podcast about Anaya’s disappearance leaves Renewa reeling and piecing together the horrifying legacy of the house, and where her sister may be.

This story is not going to hold your hand. It’s not going to coddle your delicate senses. No, it’s going to throw you deep in to tough and gruesome topics. Generation by generation we see the mistreatment, horrors, and theft dealt by colonizers on an innocent people. I implore you to be introspective BEFORE defensive while working your way through the story.

What I love about this story is how rich it is in culture and identity. It showcases the cognizant decision, generation after generation, to uphold traditions and ethos that have continuously tried to be stripped or negated. There’s a highlight on the spiritual resistance and use of ancestral pain and rage that I found utterly beautiful and devastating.

Alongside the larger commentary, we get a more focused picture of racism within the context of authorship and publishing. It examines the predatory nature of the publishing industry and the systemic disadvantages within. The black experience is not for anyone else to tell and our literary voices need to represent our true diversity.

I listened to this via audio and really enjoyed the narrating team. I felt completely engrossed in their portrayals of the characters and the nuance they brought to the performances. Through no fault of theirs, this was just a difficult format to consume the book. The mixed media storytelling was interesting and added intriguing layers that just couldn’t shine through in audio format. That being said, the horror forward scenes were SCARY this way and crazy impactful.

Overall, this story is a great example of why we should all be reading diversely and witnessing experiences and perspectives that are different from our own.

I recommend for fans of social horror, magical realism in horror, and compelling storytelling.

[Shelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase follows Anaya, a young writer from Botswana who goes missing while attending Günter Huis, a prestigious writing residency in South Africa. Her grief-stricken sister Ranewa is horrified when a sensationalized true crime podcast about her sister goes online. What starts as a missing person mystery quickly turns into something more unsettling as we learn about Anaya’s time at Günter Huis, a colonial mansion that uses supernatural visitations to push writers toward the stories that need to be told.

Overall, I really enjoyed House of Margins. It has a great combination of mystery, creepy supernatural elements, and literary horror, but it also has a lot to say about colonialism’s legacy, inherited trauma, and the way young African artists tell stories shaped by history and violence. There’s also some great commentary around the publishing industry and how it commodifies BIPOC stories while still trying to control whether those stories are “palatable” or marketable.

I found the history and cultural context really interesting, especially since it touches on histories I’ll admit I’m not as familiar with. The book doesn’t just use the house as a creepy setting. It becomes a site of memory, erasure, exploitation, and storytelling, which makes the horror feel bigger than whether or not something is lurking in a hallway. Although, to be clear, some of it is genuinely frightening.

The book is occasionally obvious in its message and metaphor, but that didn’t take away from the seriousness of what it’s covering or how invested I was in the mystery of what happened to Anaya.

One note: I received an audiobook copy, and this is an extremely mixed-media book, with past and present-day narratives, podcast episodes, short stories, poetry, news articles, and more. The audiobook is well done, but I’d recommend a physical copy or ebook so you can better track the shifts on the page.

Read more book reviews on my Substack
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[J E · Rating 5 out of 5]

House of Margins is an incredible magical realist horror work of art from Motswana author Tlotlo Tsmaase. The story is told from the perspective of both Anaya (budding young author) and Anaya's sister Ranewa, after Anaya's mysterious disappearance. The format is unlike anything I've encountered before, with transcripts from a true crime podcast, online discussion posts and poetry woven throughout the story. The pervasive and pernicious nature of white supremacy and its impact on the micro, mezzo and macro layers of everyday life globally, especially for Black folks, is explored both explicitly and symbolically. There were times when I felt a bit lost, but in all honestly this is something I loved about the book. As Tsamaase mentions in these pages, the majority of printed stories are told in such a way to be palatable to white readers (like myself). I love that stories like this, ones that I assume by the amount of untranslated Setswana included might feel more at home with Botswanan readers, are out there as well. I can only hope for their stories to continue to proliferate. And the ending I found to be complex but deeply satisfying. If you are looking for a straightforward who-done -it true crime novel, this is not for you. If you are looking for a scenic route, haunting, artistic experience with critical social commentary, pick this up right away.

Ultimately, I mean it when I say thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me access to this early copy.

A few of my favorite quotes:

"I'm restless now, but sleep aches behind my eyeballs" (What an apt turn of phrase!)

"Remember, leaving the doors open at night is a sign for the dead, welcoming them in." (Now I understand why I close my bedroom door at night, even when home alone)

"...writing is political, whether you like it or not. Your skin makes you political, whether you like it or not. The way you wear your hair is a political choice. That's the sad thing about being Black-whether you watch a tv show or read a book or you're at work or in public, our mere existence is political."

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, Tlotlo Tsamaase, and RBMedia for providing me with an advanced listening copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

House of Margins is an immersive story that blends mystery, horror, and African speculative fiction into a captivating listening experience. From the very beginning, I was drawn into the mystery surrounding Anaya’s disappearance and found myself invested in her sister Ranewa’s relentless determination to uncover the truth. The story unfolds layer by layer through a podcast, revealing secrets that kept me engaged and eager to learn what happened next.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is its use of boloi, a form of magic and spiritual power woven throughout the story. Tsamaase creates an intriguing magical landscape that feels both unsettling and compelling. The boloi adds depth to the narrative and leaves the reader wanting to understand more about the forces at work within the haunted halls of Günter Huis and the history that surrounds it.

The audiobook features an exceptional narration team. Tshego Khutsoane, Didi Khounou, and Kate Liquorish bring the characters vividly to life, giving each voice distinct personality and emotional depth. Their performances enhance the suspense and atmosphere, making the mystery even more gripping and the emotional moments more impactful. The narrators captured both the tension and the heart of the story beautifully.

While some sections felt slightly complex to follow due to the layered storytelling, the overall experience was rewarding. The combination of a missing-person mystery, sisterly devotion, haunting history, and fascinating boloi creates a story that lingers long after the final chapter.

[Di · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐✨ 3.25 Stars
I went into House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase expecting something closer to Listen for the Lie because of the true crime podcast angle. That was probably on me. This leans much more into literary gothic horror with surreal, dreamlike storytelling than it does a fast-paced thriller.

The narration team did a great job bringing each character to life, and they kept me listening even when I wasn't completely invested. I just think this story might work better for me as a physical read than an audiobook. The constant shifts in perspective, timelines, and podcast segments became hard to follow while listening. There were moments I was genuinely intrigued, but just as many where I felt confused, bored, or honestly a little annoyed every time another podcast intro started.

That said, the atmosphere is incredibly eerie, and I appreciated the themes surrounding colonialism, identity, grief, and the publishing world. The writing is beautiful and intentionally unsettling.. It just wasn't always the easiest to absorb in audio format.

🎧 Audiobook Details 📚 Author: Tlotlo Tsamaase
🎙️ Narrators: Tshego Khutsoane, Didi Khounou & Kate Liquorish
⏱️ Runtime: 10 hours 23 minutes
📅 Published: May 26, 2026

Tropes / Themes
🖤 Gothic horror
🎙️ True crime podcast
🏚️ Haunted house
✍️ Writers' residency
🔎 Missing person mystery
👭 Sisters
📖 Multiple POVs
🌍 Colonialism & cultural identity
👻 Supernatural horror

*Thank you to RB Media, Erewhon Books, and NetGalley for the advance listening copy. All opinions are my own. If this wasn't a ALC I would have not finished it and pushed it to the side to read in physical book form*

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 2 out of 5]

House Of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase, aspiring rider llama wins a fellowship to go to the renowned Gunther house with four other African riders and do their best to write a great novel. strange things are happening in the house they feel drugged they go to a party and they all become conscious in different places but soon Iyama goes missing. The book starts with Iyamas sister finding her missing cell phone on her bed and on the phone is the podcast done by one of the girls who was in the house with her. through this podcast rule will learn what her sister went through I do want to say some of this book isn’t pretty it was meant to have layers like colonization racism and I guess I must be dense because I didn’t pick up on any of that some of the book was really really weird once it got towards the end it was more in my opinion of readable book but I see most people love it and good for them I also thought it was strange that any wood would be upset that a black woman wrote white characters I mean people love hate hurt cry just like everyone else why can’t a black Author ride a white character I didn’t get that that seem like a much to do about nothing making a problem where there isn’t one. That’s a little like people saying keeping your yard nice and neat is racist but peoples proclivities being what they are is fine for them as for this book I can’t recommend that I didn’t like it I didn’t like the formatting of it the chapters were just strange IDK not for me. #NetGalley, #TheBlindReviewer, #MyHonestReview,

[Jamedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review originally on JamReads

House of Margins is a horror thriller novel written by Tlotlo Tsamaase, published by Erewhon Books. An experimental novel that mashups together true crime podcasts with a more classical gothic haunt to deliver a story that has much to say about racism and the pressure to adapt voices in order to make them more "palatable" to the general public, while also taking the opportunity to explore the suffering caused by colonialism, all accompanied by excellent imagery.

Anaya Sebeya has gone missing after a prestigious writing residency at Günter Huis, a colonial mansion with a hidden past; her sister, Ranewa, is trying to reconstruct the case behind her sister's disappearing when a true crime podcast appears and starts covering it from a sensationalized perspective, but showing more about how that residency was for Anaya, and the sinister motivations behind the own Günter Huis. Through this interactive podcast and Ranewa's investigation, we will get the opportunity to put together all the pieces and understand what happened.

Tsamaase takes the maximum advantage of that mixed media format that is the basis of this novel, allowing the reader to get a full picture of the story while balancing the narrative tension at all moments; the more intimate we get, the more suffocating the atmosphere woven around Anaya becomes.
Said that, if there's an aspect of this book that especially shines over the rest, is how Tsamaase decides to tackle certain themes from an Afro-centric perspective (probably drawing from her own experiences): the pressure from the editorial market to tame certain themes and voices to make it more acceptable for the mainstream public, how some ideas are a no-go if you want success and even how racism still plays a role nowadays. Colonialism and its consequences are also treated, trying to understand how they still permeates until our days.

Said all, pacing is a bit irregular, especially with how this novel can feel as a slowburn, dragging at certain points; it could have been more tightly written, but it also contributes to the own story.

Overall, House of Margins is a brilliant experimental horror thriller, a perfect choice if you are looking for something different, brave to explore difficult themes while also delivering a compelling story. A worthy sophomore novel by Tlotlo Tsamaase!

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not completely sure how to review this, to be honest. It’s not my normal kind of book (I don’t usually go for magic realism), but it intrigued me. And it’s exceptionally well written and executed. That said, I’m going to be realistic and say that it’s probably too literary and weird for a lot of readers.

The simmering rage throughout the book is palpable. There’s a lot to consider in terms of race, gender, generational and regular trauma, sacrifice, ambition, faith, etc. Parts are brutal but I absolutely loved how the author addressed how we process brutal realism in our culture and in the current publishing and social media landscape.

Some of the historical elements are lost on me but also felt so necessary and refreshing. There’s certainly a comment here on publishing, and in particular, how publishing (and most forms of media) tends to tokenize while also sanitizing.

I don’t think I can do this justice. I can’t say I loved it because a lot hurt but it resonated with me deeply. I’m so glad this book was published.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley.