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An Imperfect Blessing
It is 1993. South Africa is on the brink of total transformation and in Walmer Estate, a busy suburb on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, fourteen-year-old Alia Dawood is about to undergo a transformation of her own. She watches with fascination and fear as the national drama unfolds, longing to be a part of what she knows to be history in the making. As her revolutionary aspirations strengthen in the months before the elections, her intense, radical Uncle Waleed reappears, forcing her parents and sister Nasreen to confront his subversive and dangerous past.
Nadia David’s first novel moves across generations and communities, through the suburbs to the city centre, from the lush gardens of private schools to the dingy bars of Observatory, from landmark mosques and churches to the manic procession of the Cape Carnival, through evictions, rebellions, political assassinations and first loves. The book places one family’s story at the heart of a country’s rebirth and interrogates issues of faith, race, belonging and freedom.
An Imperfect Blessing is a vibrant, funny and moving debut.
Nadia David’s first novel moves across generations and communities, through the suburbs to the city centre, from the lush gardens of private schools to the dingy bars of Observatory, from landmark mosques and churches to the manic procession of the Cape Carnival, through evictions, rebellions, political assassinations and first loves. The book places one family’s story at the heart of a country’s rebirth and interrogates issues of faith, race, belonging and freedom.
An Imperfect Blessing is a vibrant, funny and moving debut.
416 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2014
12 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 1, 2021
I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to reading this book, because it is beautifully written with wonderful characters. It depicts a particular moment in South African history through the experiences of a single Muslim-Coloured family. This felt very personal, I lived through many of these experiences, but represents is from a very different perspective as my own.
The characters are well-rounded and developed, but it is the descriptions of events and places that feels so right and familiar and yet seen through fresh-eyes. All set against a city which the author knows intimately and which at times is a character of its own.
Highly recommend this one.
The characters are well-rounded and developed, but it is the descriptions of events and places that feels so right and familiar and yet seen through fresh-eyes. All set against a city which the author knows intimately and which at times is a character of its own.
Highly recommend this one.
August 3, 2016
I LOVED this book. This book is an incredible story of a Cape Malay family in Cape Town during apartheid South Africa and it is a beautifully told story. My video review of this book can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbMZ5...
December 16, 2014
Nadia Davids’ Imperfect Blessing is a fantastic coming of age story about a teenage girl named Alia who grows up as South Africa transitions out of its apartheid government. Set in 1994 in a Coloured community in Cape Town, Alia struggles with her dual Muslim and Coloured identity as she navigates integrated schooling, a relationship, her parents’ viewpoints, and her uncle Waleed’s radical adventures. In this novel, Davids manages to craft a modern family tree and successfully recognize each of its branches and its deep, yet mangled roots.
I read this book as part of a class on South African fiction at my university. This book fit nicely into our unit on Coloured identity because it offered a nuanced portrait of the many takes on what it means to be Coloured in modern-day South Africa.
Davids is a native of South Africa, and her close ties to Cape Town reveal themself in the novel, wherein geographical particularities are rendered with expertise. The scenery and landscape of Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula are enhanced with frequent mentions of street names, landmarks, and cultural references. The city practically came to life and was a living, breathing, and dynamic space that was as much a character as any person in the novel.
An Imperfect Blessing is a novel that feels distinctly South African. And even though it is currently only being published in South Africa and the U.K., the book invites readers that are from other countries and cultures. It did not feel watered-down, so it definitely requires that the reader do some investigative work while reading. As I flipped each page of the 410-page book, I tended to have Google open. The Afrikaans words and cultural references make the novel more authentic and realistic, so the extra translation work was worth it.
In this work of fiction, David exposes herself as a playwright because most of the intensive character development, exposition of Muslim-Coloured culture, and political revelations about South Africa occur through scenes and conversations that are exceptionally long. Alia’s afternoon at Hal’s and Cousin Tasneem’s wedding are two scenes that stood out to me for their length and their impactful presentation of relationships and societal challenges. Each of these longer scenes felt like an act in play, but sometimes they felt drawn out. Despite this, Davids’ knack for writing images and making people come to life is evident in these long scenes. For example, at Tasneem’s wedding, Davids skillfully depicts the colors and textures of the gowns and the textures of the food. She even differentiates between the tables, subtly exposing the crucial difference between “the Christian table” and the rest of the tables in the hall.
As far as characterization goes, Davids does a fantastic job depicting the relationships between people. Waleed and Adam are brothers with different outlooks on life, yet are always in search of a common ground. Alia and Nasreen’s relationship is wonderfully tender and filled with the regular stuff of sisterhood. Adam and Zarina’s relationship is characterized by a fierce desire to raise their children properly and remain loyal to each other even in the face of family crisis. Alia and Nick’s relationship stands out because it is so new and explores all the cheesy possibilities of a blossoming romance. Waleed and Anna’s relationship is characterized by intense love, but frustrating cultural differences. Aside from these richly developed key relationships, Davids introduces several characters that we get to see briefly, but then kind of fade into oblivion as the large novel progresses. Particularly, I think the novel would have benefitted from a closer examination of Nick’s (presumably "Cape Coloured") Coloured family. I think providing more details about this family’s dynamic and cultural practices would have been a great comparative move to make in order to highlight the particularities and uniqueness of Muslim-Coloured identity. It would have made it clearer to international audiences who may be unfamiliar with the term “Coloured” that “Coloured” has many, diverse variations. However, by focusing solely on the Dawood family, Davids makes this a novel explicitly about them. So, I can absolutely understand how delving into Nick’s family may have decentered the narrative away from the Dawoods.
In An Imperfect Blessing, Davids tackles apartheid’s large, structural issues, but she mainly grapples with the domestic, everyday manifestations of living under a white supremacist system. Key examples of Davids’ skillful handling of the structural and the domestic are when straight-haired Uncle Waleed gets dreadlocks, when Alia blasts Nick’s supposed lack of identity, and when Anna struggles to stop “objectifying the Black body.” Ultimately, in An Imperfect Blessing, Davids renders larger, societal issues as revealing themself in the most intimate and personal moments. By doing this, she makes apartheid seem less abstract and writes it as something that was incredibly real that had very human ramifications.
Despite the sometimes-heavy subject matter of the novel, I thought that Davids managed to inject a light, humorous tones into many moments. This made the novel a pleasurable read. I particularly enjoyed exploring the nuances of the characters’ relationships and reading about how they try to grow up with the nation. Throughout the novel journey, Davids expertly interweaves moments of the family’s past without departing from the narrative too abruptly. Particularly, Waleed was crafted as a nuanced and realistic person. Waleed was incredibly likable because he always made efforts to work for the greater good of others. Waleed was my favorite character in the novel because his story was a touching Künstlerroman that all aspiring artists can relate to.
The novel is a beautiful portrait of a family that uses extended scenes to characterize and advance the plot. This book is fulfilling, but I do think that Davids’ message of family love, strength, and empowerment could have gotten across just as well in about 300 pages. The descriptions of details and imagery were rendered beautifully, but sometimes felt drawn out. Overall, An Imperfect Blessing is an impressive novel that manages to tackle a wide array of subject matters. It is a teenage coming of age story, but it is also the coming of age of an artist. It is ultimately a hopeful story about the growing up of a girl, her uncle, their family, and a nation that is shifting away from apartheid. Anyone interested in studies of culture, race, colonialism, religion, multiculturalism, and academia would find this book incredibly appealing because it expertly weaves each of these topics into each other without seeming too jumbled or overly ambitious. Anyone who has enjoyed Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns would also enjoy An Imperfect Blessing. This book was incredibly useful for enhancing my understanding of what it can mean to be “Coloured” in South Africa.
June 6, 2017
I wanted to read Nadia’s novel as I briefly overlapped with her at UCT and knew her very vaguely. I suppose, to be more exact, I knew of her – I saw her by sight and knew her by reputation as already a skilled playwright – I don’t think she knew me. Much of Nadia’s work is about examining Muslim culture as it is lived in Cape Town (for instance, the play At Her Feet, which features an all-female cast of characters performed by the actor Quanita Adams). An Imperfect Blessing, similarly, follows a Muslim family from Walmer Estate in Cape Town during 1993 – a year before the first democratic elections – with flashbacks to the political violence of 1986.
Now that I’ve started following local fiction again (I blush, I blush, at my lateness), I am enjoying reading about places and characters which feel both familiar and unfamiliar to me. It is such a special privilege to hear another writer’s description of a place where I’ve spent time. The book opens with a paean to Walmer Estate (Woodstock and its neighbouring suburbs are favourites of mine), noting that people who live on a hill always feel a little superior, and the power of the wind in Cape Town, with the very houses themselves pitching forward towards the harbour. This image of instability, of the wind threatening to blow you away, becomes a central metaphor in the novel.
The Dawoods are solidly middle-class, Adam is a politically detached businessman who is chiefly concerned about his family’s wellbeing and their standing in the community; Waleed, his younger brother, is an activist and a PhD student with a white girlfriend. While both experienced police violence first hand, Adam’s reaction was to keep his family – and particularly his children safe – while Waleed’s impulse was to reach out to the resistance movement. Their mother is a lonely widow who pushes her children away despite her best efforts to keep them close, and who resents Adam’s wife Zulaigha and Waleed’s girlfriend Anna. Meanwhile, Adam’s teenage daughters Nasreen and Alia are testing the limits of parental and school control and working out what the new political freedoms mean for their own household and community.
There’s a lot in here about identity. For instance, Alia’s Christian boyfriend, Nick, confesses that when he sees images of Bushmen in the old South African History Museum (dioramas that I remember vividly) he thinks of his family, but Alia does not. He’s envious of Alia, who has a rich tradition from her Cape Malay and Indian heritage (as well as Irish forebears), while his grandmother refuses to discuss his own family history. Devastatingly, Alia throws this back at him during an argument which threatens to derail their relationship. Yet, at another moment in the book, Waleed thinks of unknown slave ancestors, brought in shackles to the Cape, whose language has now been forgotten. There are no winners in the game of identity politics.
Points for improvement? I felt the ending petered out, with ends too-neatly tied up. I would have liked a little more tension, a little more uncertainty here. Nevertheless, the book is well worth a read, particularly if you know Cape Town at all. As an outsider to this community with Muslim friends – some from Walmer Estate – I enjoyed reading about the Dawood family and felt I’d gained a deeper insight into Muslim culture. I also really enjoyed the dialect words which were included, which help to give a very specific sense of place, and as a Cape Town expat myself, provided a link with a home I’ve left behind.
Now that I’ve started following local fiction again (I blush, I blush, at my lateness), I am enjoying reading about places and characters which feel both familiar and unfamiliar to me. It is such a special privilege to hear another writer’s description of a place where I’ve spent time. The book opens with a paean to Walmer Estate (Woodstock and its neighbouring suburbs are favourites of mine), noting that people who live on a hill always feel a little superior, and the power of the wind in Cape Town, with the very houses themselves pitching forward towards the harbour. This image of instability, of the wind threatening to blow you away, becomes a central metaphor in the novel.
The Dawoods are solidly middle-class, Adam is a politically detached businessman who is chiefly concerned about his family’s wellbeing and their standing in the community; Waleed, his younger brother, is an activist and a PhD student with a white girlfriend. While both experienced police violence first hand, Adam’s reaction was to keep his family – and particularly his children safe – while Waleed’s impulse was to reach out to the resistance movement. Their mother is a lonely widow who pushes her children away despite her best efforts to keep them close, and who resents Adam’s wife Zulaigha and Waleed’s girlfriend Anna. Meanwhile, Adam’s teenage daughters Nasreen and Alia are testing the limits of parental and school control and working out what the new political freedoms mean for their own household and community.
There’s a lot in here about identity. For instance, Alia’s Christian boyfriend, Nick, confesses that when he sees images of Bushmen in the old South African History Museum (dioramas that I remember vividly) he thinks of his family, but Alia does not. He’s envious of Alia, who has a rich tradition from her Cape Malay and Indian heritage (as well as Irish forebears), while his grandmother refuses to discuss his own family history. Devastatingly, Alia throws this back at him during an argument which threatens to derail their relationship. Yet, at another moment in the book, Waleed thinks of unknown slave ancestors, brought in shackles to the Cape, whose language has now been forgotten. There are no winners in the game of identity politics.
Points for improvement? I felt the ending petered out, with ends too-neatly tied up. I would have liked a little more tension, a little more uncertainty here. Nevertheless, the book is well worth a read, particularly if you know Cape Town at all. As an outsider to this community with Muslim friends – some from Walmer Estate – I enjoyed reading about the Dawood family and felt I’d gained a deeper insight into Muslim culture. I also really enjoyed the dialect words which were included, which help to give a very specific sense of place, and as a Cape Town expat myself, provided a link with a home I’ve left behind.
November 10, 2020
I don't know how I missed this book as it came out in 2014. I was also coming of age as the protagonists in the late 19080's and early 1990's in South Africa, but in a white community. The book made me realise yet again how naive we were at the time. We thought President Mandela's rainbow magic would resolve all our problems, but we overlooked the deep seated trauma experienced by the majority of the population. Davids captures the story of one Muslim family of District Six so well by painting the political backdrop with dexterity. Possibly the best book I've read of South Africa during those heady years of hope and heartbreak.
July 9, 2021
An Imperfect Blessing by Nadia Davids
Publisher: Umuzi
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0769-7
Set in the year 1993 in South Africa on the verge of political transition to African rule, fourteen-year-old Alia Dawood, the youngest daughter in a Cape Town Muslim family on the Walmer Estate is trying to make sense of the world around her, experiencing her first love and negotiating family pressures and tensions.
As I read this novel became almost jealous of the tender warm, sometimes fraught lives of the Dawoods – Nadia Davids has made them so real you want to pop in for tea and discuss politics, their fears for the future and worries over family members. Alia’s sister Nasreen is more sure of herself in this world and protective of her sister. Their Uncle Waleed, the ‘radical’ is a worry, procrastinating over his PhD and wanting to be relevant in the ‘struggle’, but life in Cape Town is, as always, a ritual of get togethers, feasts, duties, rivalries.
Life in Walmer Estate, a city village pressed up against the De Waal Drive Highway above Salt River and nearby Observatory is full of families decanted from District Six – one of the more wicked clearances by the Nationalists where they literally erased a whole community. The scar is still visible. They have learned to live with this, adapt, each indignity making them stronger not weaker. But nevertheless, Alia and Nasreen, now schooled in a private White School develop their own ideas about what justice is and what is important to them.
The story takes places at an explosive time. Assassinations, the imminent rise of Nelson Mandela always in the background, but life goes on. Alia has fallen for Nick, a Christian boy much to her father’s distress, this is her story and her youthful appraisal of the people around her. It’s a time of hope and fear for the future.
It’s charming, completely engaging, with beautifully crafted writing. You do not have to fear it being too political or set in a world outside your familiar. It’s family life and one of the most acutely observed portraits of individuals banded together by blood I have read.
Sam Hawksmoor
We Feel Your Pain - So You Don't Have To
Publisher: Umuzi
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0769-7
Set in the year 1993 in South Africa on the verge of political transition to African rule, fourteen-year-old Alia Dawood, the youngest daughter in a Cape Town Muslim family on the Walmer Estate is trying to make sense of the world around her, experiencing her first love and negotiating family pressures and tensions.
As I read this novel became almost jealous of the tender warm, sometimes fraught lives of the Dawoods – Nadia Davids has made them so real you want to pop in for tea and discuss politics, their fears for the future and worries over family members. Alia’s sister Nasreen is more sure of herself in this world and protective of her sister. Their Uncle Waleed, the ‘radical’ is a worry, procrastinating over his PhD and wanting to be relevant in the ‘struggle’, but life in Cape Town is, as always, a ritual of get togethers, feasts, duties, rivalries.
Life in Walmer Estate, a city village pressed up against the De Waal Drive Highway above Salt River and nearby Observatory is full of families decanted from District Six – one of the more wicked clearances by the Nationalists where they literally erased a whole community. The scar is still visible. They have learned to live with this, adapt, each indignity making them stronger not weaker. But nevertheless, Alia and Nasreen, now schooled in a private White School develop their own ideas about what justice is and what is important to them.
The story takes places at an explosive time. Assassinations, the imminent rise of Nelson Mandela always in the background, but life goes on. Alia has fallen for Nick, a Christian boy much to her father’s distress, this is her story and her youthful appraisal of the people around her. It’s a time of hope and fear for the future.
It’s charming, completely engaging, with beautifully crafted writing. You do not have to fear it being too political or set in a world outside your familiar. It’s family life and one of the most acutely observed portraits of individuals banded together by blood I have read.
Sam Hawksmoor
We Feel Your Pain - So You Don't Have To
June 2, 2024
(clears throat, grabs a megaphone)
Ahem. NADIA DAVIDS WROTE A BOOK AND NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT IT???
Phew needed to get that out the way. Nadia Davids is a fantastic South African playwright so when I found out she wrote a book I had a fan girl moment.
Her debut novel, An Imperfect Blessing, centers around the Daswood family during the last few years of the Apartheid years. We follow various family members trying to navigate life during these strange times. Among these include: Waleed - heavily involved and aware of the complex political issues while struggling to complete his thesis. Nasreen - who is determined to have her voice be heard. Zarina - trying to balance her family's needs, keep the family peace and keep her daughters safe. And Alia - 14 and having her eyes be opened to the very real and complicated world around her.
These characters are very vivid and the world feels very familiar. The emotions and thoughts of these characters are especially relevant given today's political climate. It's definitely worth a read.
If I had to nitpick, I would argue the flipping being POVs happened alil too easily and too quickly. I enjoyed it more when we stayed with one character for longer. Having said that, when I was with a character, I liked them and wanted things to work out for them.
Have you read this book? Are you also a big Nadia Davids fan? Would love to hear your thoughts?
Ahem. NADIA DAVIDS WROTE A BOOK AND NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT IT???
Phew needed to get that out the way. Nadia Davids is a fantastic South African playwright so when I found out she wrote a book I had a fan girl moment.
Her debut novel, An Imperfect Blessing, centers around the Daswood family during the last few years of the Apartheid years. We follow various family members trying to navigate life during these strange times. Among these include: Waleed - heavily involved and aware of the complex political issues while struggling to complete his thesis. Nasreen - who is determined to have her voice be heard. Zarina - trying to balance her family's needs, keep the family peace and keep her daughters safe. And Alia - 14 and having her eyes be opened to the very real and complicated world around her.
These characters are very vivid and the world feels very familiar. The emotions and thoughts of these characters are especially relevant given today's political climate. It's definitely worth a read.
If I had to nitpick, I would argue the flipping being POVs happened alil too easily and too quickly. I enjoyed it more when we stayed with one character for longer. Having said that, when I was with a character, I liked them and wanted things to work out for them.
Have you read this book? Are you also a big Nadia Davids fan? Would love to hear your thoughts?
July 22, 2023
A wonderful book - beautifully written, captivating, and evoking important political questions regarding the past and present of apartheid in South Africa and the traumatic effects of that period as well as the time of 'transition'. The novel does so by narrating a locally rooted story of a Muslim-coloured community living in Cape Town through the eyes of the coming of age female protagonist. This autobiographically inspired portrayal of local experiences and realities will make the story relatable for many Capetonians (even for me as a non-South African but knowing and loving this city, many of the descriptions and references were recognisable and helped to relate to the plot and its dramatic turns). The narrative, however, never becomes melodramatic; rather it brings to light a lot of contemporary social dilemmas (inequality, disappointment, disconnection between generations), showing their roots in the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
July 3, 2022
Loved everything about this book! South African stories tend have a heaviness about them (understandably so), but despite being set during those tense years of transition, this story is buoyant and warm and so truly and recognisably Capetonian. I also adore Nadia Davids’ lyrical writing style and ability to conjure up vivid imagery. (Even more so for those of us familiar with the Mother City’s contours, crevices and complicated spatial planning)
March 28, 2023
Well written. It's a good story but only borders on the powerful events that are happening during that time. This book follows a slice of life of a Cape Town colored Muslim family just before & up to the break of Apartheid.
March 3, 2018
A look inside a comfortable Muslim family during the placements out of District Six.
All the politics of the time and the impact on different members of the family
All the politics of the time and the impact on different members of the family
September 5, 2018
I enjoyed Nadia Davids exudation of words. I relish how she was able to juxtapose the family life of the Daewoods and the political quagmire in South Africa . A good read.
February 10, 2019
A beautifully written book with both witty and sensitive insight into a moment in South Africa's history.
April 4, 2019
Fascinating glimpse and engaging look into a Cape Malay family during the early 1990's in Cape Town, South Africa
February 10, 2022
3.5 Stars.
July 6, 2022
A good read but not particularly memorable
January 28, 2023
Beautiful.
June 2, 2024
Very good!
September 3, 2025
The family this followed was very endearing. I haven't read a book where all of the characters feel so human in a long time.
I learned so much about mid '90s South African politics too.
I learned so much about mid '90s South African politics too.
January 24, 2016
I first came across this book when it made the shortlist of Nigeria's Etisalat prize for Africa literature. I searched every bookshop, in multiple cities, on two separate trips to South Africa, looking for this book - in vain. I finally managed to find an e-copy on www.hive.co.uk. - around the same time that the author generously gifted me a hard copy of her book (Twitter - you have your uses!). That was a lovely gesture, Nadia. Thank you.
[Let this also be a lesson in why I should not try to read fiction on kindle - it's a totally different experience. Had I picked up the real book, I would have completed it much sooner, and probably appreciated the book a lot more].
I liked the book because it depicted in a humorous way a community in South Africa not often written about. It tried hard to be a coming-of-age/ South Africa at-a-time-of-political-transition-type book, but like Zia Haider Rahman's 'In the light of what we know', I thought it tried too hard with the many 'big ideas'. The book works best as a comment on the more 'everyday', letting the political backdrop be a more effortless part of the story. The Fozia character. How she dealt with the disappointment of her wayward son. The Zarina character. They were real. (The Farouk character, who everyone called 'Carlton' - Fresh Prince reference intended - because of his conservative style, who nonetheless cleared the club floor with his dancing, made me laugh. 'The crowd, in which there was a strict and unforgiving hierarchy of coolness, began to look at him as though his clothing was a choice, not a disaster').
I loved the everyday comments to which I could relate ("It's Jummah!" said Adam, outraged. How can you SWIM when it's Jummah?")
The narcissism of the Waleed character was another fine example (his self- centredness - how 'system patriarchy had fed him a looped myth that this was acceptable') - ah yes. Spot on! The inevitable outcome of the overly doting South African muslim mother, who will forgive all the rules broken by her son. Smirk. It's time someone called this out.
The political backdrop worked much better on the level of Alia's letters to her boyfriend Nick - it wasn't trying too hard -unlike the references to the disappearance of political activists who were no more than young children. And it's in this sort of anecdote that the strength of the book lies:
'Some idiot started going on and on to me about how we should forgive the Nats because that was what "The Lord" wanted us to do. Christians, man...(joking). And then I came home and watched some TV coverage of the day: nothing you wouldn't have seen, Madiba beaming, aerial shots of mile-long queues, all the commentators talking about the 98% voter turnout. I called Lizzie. I could barely hear her above the music in the background. She invited me round, she said Gugs was HOPPING, mad with joy, and I begged my mother to take me there but she kept saying she was tired.'
There may not be much of a plot, but along with Rayda Jacobs' books, it's about the best that I've read. For that, I am deeply grateful.
[Let this also be a lesson in why I should not try to read fiction on kindle - it's a totally different experience. Had I picked up the real book, I would have completed it much sooner, and probably appreciated the book a lot more].
I liked the book because it depicted in a humorous way a community in South Africa not often written about. It tried hard to be a coming-of-age/ South Africa at-a-time-of-political-transition-type book, but like Zia Haider Rahman's 'In the light of what we know', I thought it tried too hard with the many 'big ideas'. The book works best as a comment on the more 'everyday', letting the political backdrop be a more effortless part of the story. The Fozia character. How she dealt with the disappointment of her wayward son. The Zarina character. They were real. (The Farouk character, who everyone called 'Carlton' - Fresh Prince reference intended - because of his conservative style, who nonetheless cleared the club floor with his dancing, made me laugh. 'The crowd, in which there was a strict and unforgiving hierarchy of coolness, began to look at him as though his clothing was a choice, not a disaster').
I loved the everyday comments to which I could relate ("It's Jummah!" said Adam, outraged. How can you SWIM when it's Jummah?")
The narcissism of the Waleed character was another fine example (his self- centredness - how 'system patriarchy had fed him a looped myth that this was acceptable') - ah yes. Spot on! The inevitable outcome of the overly doting South African muslim mother, who will forgive all the rules broken by her son. Smirk. It's time someone called this out.
The political backdrop worked much better on the level of Alia's letters to her boyfriend Nick - it wasn't trying too hard -unlike the references to the disappearance of political activists who were no more than young children. And it's in this sort of anecdote that the strength of the book lies:
'Some idiot started going on and on to me about how we should forgive the Nats because that was what "The Lord" wanted us to do. Christians, man...(joking). And then I came home and watched some TV coverage of the day: nothing you wouldn't have seen, Madiba beaming, aerial shots of mile-long queues, all the commentators talking about the 98% voter turnout. I called Lizzie. I could barely hear her above the music in the background. She invited me round, she said Gugs was HOPPING, mad with joy, and I begged my mother to take me there but she kept saying she was tired.'
There may not be much of a plot, but along with Rayda Jacobs' books, it's about the best that I've read. For that, I am deeply grateful.
December 18, 2014
Nadia Davids' first novel, An Imperfect Blessings is smart, evocative, and complicated. Set in 1993 South Africa, the story follows fourteen-year-old Alia Dawood and her experiences as a young Coloured and Muslim teenager coming of age on the eve of South Africa's transition to democracy. Davids' command of language is beautiful, and she often uses unusual metaphors that enhance the scene and set her writing apart. At one point, the family sits in "an asymmetrical silence," and a visit from Alia's Uncle Waleed makes "the ordinary shot through with the celebratory." And though the viewpoint of the novel does occasionally switch--most notably, to Waleed or Alia's sister Nasreen--Davids has done a fantastic job of capturing the voice and feelings of a young teenager, as well as Alia's individual struggles. Davids characterizes Alia's room a "one of messy beginnings...she knew what sort of room she wanted, and it wasn't this one. It was as if the room, like her personality, was something she couldn't quite get right." Davids follows Alia's attempts to discern her personality, and, for the reader, it is a well-written and worthwhile journey.
At times, however, it can feel as though Davids is trying to do too much. Placing Alia, her family, and their daily lives at the center of a story about apartheid makes An Imperfect Blessing an important and easily accessible work. But the characters are constantly confronting dozens of questions--the mundane, the existential, questions about injustice, and those particular to being Coloured and Muslim in apartheid-era South Africa. And while the volume and heightened difficulty the characters face is beautifully written, prompts questions, and may mirror real life, it results in a plot that occasionally feels forced and rushed. The narrative switches often between Waleed and his struggles with language, his thesis, and his girlfriend, and Alia, struggling with fashion choices, a first boyfriend, and where she belongs amidst South Africa's hyper politicized and racialized landscape. While the contrast between the two characters raises important points, the reader can sometimes feel as though Davids is moving too quickly through too much material.
But on the whole, Davids has done a fantastic job sifting through and writing about a large volume of often-disparate subjects. She has written a book that is a coming-of-age story of both a young woman and a country, and has juxtaposed the beautiful and the ordinary with the atrocities and tragedies of apartheid, making the depiction realistic rather than a forced or jumbled collection. Though the details and amount of material she tries to tackle can sometimes feel overwhelming, Davids has written a brilliant and beautiful novel.
At times, however, it can feel as though Davids is trying to do too much. Placing Alia, her family, and their daily lives at the center of a story about apartheid makes An Imperfect Blessing an important and easily accessible work. But the characters are constantly confronting dozens of questions--the mundane, the existential, questions about injustice, and those particular to being Coloured and Muslim in apartheid-era South Africa. And while the volume and heightened difficulty the characters face is beautifully written, prompts questions, and may mirror real life, it results in a plot that occasionally feels forced and rushed. The narrative switches often between Waleed and his struggles with language, his thesis, and his girlfriend, and Alia, struggling with fashion choices, a first boyfriend, and where she belongs amidst South Africa's hyper politicized and racialized landscape. While the contrast between the two characters raises important points, the reader can sometimes feel as though Davids is moving too quickly through too much material.
But on the whole, Davids has done a fantastic job sifting through and writing about a large volume of often-disparate subjects. She has written a book that is a coming-of-age story of both a young woman and a country, and has juxtaposed the beautiful and the ordinary with the atrocities and tragedies of apartheid, making the depiction realistic rather than a forced or jumbled collection. Though the details and amount of material she tries to tackle can sometimes feel overwhelming, Davids has written a brilliant and beautiful novel.
December 19, 2014
I’ve always found coming-of-age stories difficult to read, only in that they have always failed to catch my attention. They seem cliché, always focusing on teen angst and the mental/emotional development of a single character. And yet Nadia Davids’s An Imperfect Blessing was surprisingly pleasant to read, considering it fits the textbook definition of the genre so well. I credit that to the multi-layered aspect of the novel. An Imperfect Blessing isn’t just about the coming-of-age of Alia Dawood, but rather her, the Dawood family, and post-apartheid South Africa as a whole. Each of these entities undergoes significant development over the course of the text, which inspires a number of interesting routes for analysis. But the intersection between morality and aspects of the novel such as the ending of apartheid, democratic voting, and radical revolutionaries, combined with the novel’s focus on Alia’s moral development as a character, push the book further past the “coming-of-age” genre and into the category of a bildungsroman. And while the book does have a tendency to fall into cliché and romanticism, Davids redeems it by masterfully writing the nuanced problems of morality and all the grey-areas that come along with it in light of something as tragic as apartheid. Definitely worth the read!
Read
April 12, 2016Interview with the author:
http://shortstorydayafrica.org/news/i...
Quotes:
- Alia's room was one of messy beginnings. -
- But this was his farewell performance and he was speechifying towards a legacy. The pleasure and engagement of his audience was fleeting, but the reproduction of the full text in the school magazine was forever. -
- But then, you can't put a price on overseas. Even if the fabric is poor quality, people go nuts for an import. -
- Samoosas and mind games. -
- No, she hated all sports. She didn't mind that they happened, out there, in the world, but she failed to understand why her home should be taken over by them and all their grim accompaniments: the ceaseless televisual drone of the commentators, the wasted Saturdays, the interminable post-match analysis. -
- He didn't tell Rashaad that he hoped never to stop being angry, not because he wanted to live in a state of perpetual rage, but because the anger was a way of remembering. -
http://shortstorydayafrica.org/news/i...
Quotes:
- Alia's room was one of messy beginnings. -
- But this was his farewell performance and he was speechifying towards a legacy. The pleasure and engagement of his audience was fleeting, but the reproduction of the full text in the school magazine was forever. -
- But then, you can't put a price on overseas. Even if the fabric is poor quality, people go nuts for an import. -
- Samoosas and mind games. -
- No, she hated all sports. She didn't mind that they happened, out there, in the world, but she failed to understand why her home should be taken over by them and all their grim accompaniments: the ceaseless televisual drone of the commentators, the wasted Saturdays, the interminable post-match analysis. -
- He didn't tell Rashaad that he hoped never to stop being angry, not because he wanted to live in a state of perpetual rage, but because the anger was a way of remembering. -
December 18, 2014
Nadia David's An Imperfect Blessing is an excellent novel that details life living under a Coloured and Muslim identity in South Africa very personally and honestly. Set in 1994, the text creates a very distinct South African feel. David's discusses a coming of age narrative of a teenage girl, Alia, as she and her community transition out of the age of the Apartheid. She does an excellent job of allowing her work to feel very close to home as she discusses issues of schooling, the development of relationships, and family dynamics. For instance, the author details the pure nature of sisterhood through the characters Alia and Nasreen. Here, David's does an excellent job of balancing the upheaval of transitioning with the normalcy of life. Through her words, she paints a very vivid picture of modern-day South Africa by using descriptive language as well as very specific mentioning of current street names and landmarks. I would certainly recommend An Imperfect Blessing to any reader interested in culture, religion, or the discovery of identity. David's does an excellent job of combining the three into an educational as well as enjoyable work of fiction.
January 2, 2016
I loved this book. I picked it up in a little bookstore in Cape Town, and was drawn to it because it had a character with the same name as my mum. It gave a totally different view on post-apartheid South Africa to those I've read so far - this time, from the perspective of a girl growing up in a Muslim community. It's a cross between a coming-of-age story, but with a difficult political and cultural situation. Really, really recommended.
November 11, 2014
Beautifully written book about family. A must read.
July 21, 2017
Evocative of that time during the 1990s, characters feel real. But reads more like a collection of memories than a real narrative.
December 13, 2017
Nadia Davids has a created a beautiful piece of writing where she unpacks the emotional turmoil and fear leading up to South Africa's 1994 democratic elections while at the same time delivering the truth in a sensitive but clear description. The story follows three generations of the Dawoods family lending subjectivity and feeling to the clinical structure of Apartheid and the objective portrayal of it in history lessons and news articles. The objectified position that people of colour occupy in Apartheid is stripped down to the subjectivity of the individual while at the same time including the views of the marginalised characters (ironically white South Africans). I felt the pain, confusion and hope along with each character with Davids descriptions creating vivid images in my head of violent scenes as well as tender moments between loved ones in times of crisis. Davids is able to seamlessly interweave the past, present and future in order to present themes of rememberance and progress. Above all, Davids focused on how human beings despite their situations - we love, grow, fight, feel joy and sadness- fundamentally we are the same.
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