The Quality of Mercy

by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

This is indeed a story of mercy – and the redemption it offers. On the eve of his retirement, Spokes Moloi, a police officer of spotless integrity, investigates one final the possible murder of Emil Coetzee, head of the sinister Organisation of Domestic Affairs, who disappears on the same day a ceasefire is declared and the country’s independence beckons. In following the tangled threads of Coetzee’s life, Spokes raises and resolves conundrums that have haunted him, and his country, for decades under colonial rule. In all this, he is staunchly supported by his paragon spouse, Loveness, and his unofficially adopted daughter, the unorthodox postman Dikiledi.


In her most magnificent novel yet, award-winning author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu showcases the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state with a deft touch and a compassionate eye for poignant detail. Linked to The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, Ndlovu’s novel nevertheless stands alone in its evocation of life in the City of Kings and surrounding villages. Dickensian in its scope, with the proverbial bustling cast of colleagues both good and bad, villagers, guerrillas, neighbours, ex-soldiers, suburban madams, shopkeepers, would-be politicians and more, The Quality of Mercy proposes that ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken – and that love can heal even the most grievous of wounds.

Genres: Mystery, Africa, Literary Fiction, Fiction

444 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2022

About the author

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University, as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. Born in Zimbabwe, she currently lives and works in Johannesburg. The Theory of Flight is her first novel.

Reviews

[Paige Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to review a remarkable book that you fear you will not do justice to.
See, already I think that first sentence is grammatically incorrect.
The Quality of Mercy, by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, is an intricate and rich read. This 381-page book has enough story stuffed into it to actually be a 781 page book.
The beautifully written stories come thick and fast, from the first paragraph all the way into the last few sentences of the acknowledgements (which made me want to cry, in a beautiful-happy-ugly-cry way).
This is the third in a trilogy. The others complement it (I’ve read one of them) but you don’t need to have read them to know what’s going on, they're related but entirely stand-alone.
The Quality of Mercy is set in the City of Kings and surrounding villages.
It’s about police officer, Spokes M. Moloi, he of spotless integrity and a fedora.
It’s about his wife, the most lovely Loveness.
It’s about the possible murder of Emil Coetzee, head of the sinister Organisation of Domestic Affairs. Emil, the enigmatic, handsome, blue-eyed boy of City of Kings.
It’s also about Emil’s wife, Kuki, and Emil’s string of girlfriends.
It's about Daisy, whose murder has yet to be solved, years later.
And Saskia, the journalist, who has one off-white tooth.
And here I’ve only listed the tip of the iceberg of curious, strange, charming, good and evil characters, who wend their way from chapter to chapter, sometimes almost like short stories within the greater narrative of murder, quirk, politics, freedom, infidelity and intrigue.
And what does Spokes Moloi’s initial ‘M’ stand for? Well that’s just one of the many mysteries everyone in City of Kings is dying to solve, as I turned the last pages of The Quality of Mercy, and wished there were more.

[Beryl Eichenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gifted storyteller, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, brings us The Quality of Mercy, the final book in the trilogy that began with Theory of Flight and was followed by History of Man. The good news is that each book stands alone so well does she craft her characters and her stories, but you will want to read the others after finishing this, simply for the satisfaction of extending your stay in the City of Kings.
As she says…’ this novel began many years ago as a story my grandmother told me…any story that was fortunate enough to find its way onto her tongue was brought to colourful life.’ Ndlovu has truly inherited that gift of storytelling and, while the origins of the story may have been a while back, here she prologues the novel with this story based on what her grandmother told her…and so the doors to her magical world are opened.
As the novel progresses, she invokes that spell that blurs fiction and myth bringing a cast of what I can only describe as technicolour characters. Larger than life, their quirks create a stage set for a story of unheralded adventure with heroes, murderers, mistaken identities, mistresses, guerrillas, ex-soldiers and heartbreak in this bustling story. But it is enduring love that both begins and ends this deliciously engaging story.
There is a busyness that hauls you inside the pages making you part of the evolving action as we enter the mythical African City of Kings. These are not quiet streets or quiet people now that ceasefire has been declared. Independence is on the horizon and colonialism is about to be replaced with a post - colonial state. Spokes Moloi, a policeman with spotless integrity is about to retire and his wife Loveness could not be happier. He has had an exemplary career, with only a couple of cases that remain unsolved – the ‘Daisy case’ being one, something that has irked him. As the City settles into its new status Emil Coetzee, the powerful Head of the sinister Organisation of Domestic Affairs walks into the bush, and disappears. This is a mystery to be followed up, and, with conflicting reports it is up to Spokes to solve this, his last case. Was Emil murdered or could he have committed suicide?
Piece by piece, tangle by tangle, myth by myth Spokes peels away the layers of the embattled Coetzee’s life to reveal some surprising and baffling information. Along the way we meet the mistress, the ex-wife - mourning for the loss of her son and ex-husband, the impersonator and the madam. With each character wanting to contribute some information on the feared Emil there are an awful lot of red herrings which lead Spokes into a maze of contradictions and lead to unexpected outcomes. And does he solve it? Well that’s for you the reader to discover.
Delve into the pages of this book and you will be simply captivated. It’s a book that you live as you follow the footsteps, the sickly sweet perfume of the stalker, watch the skulduggery between politicians and secret service characters (very close to the truth methinks!) and follow intrepid journalist and biographer Saskia Hargrave as she weaves her own web of deceit.
Ndlovu’s writing style is uniquely decisive, her phraseology defining her meaning. She writes about social issues and does not shirk at the horrors, the violence and the heartbreak that affects us all. She is a brave writer, bringing a new style of literary fiction that is accessible, readable and totally absorbing. Many of her characters deserve a book of their own, but I urge you to enter the wonder that is Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s world. You will never be disappointed.
Born in Zimbabwe Ndlovu has already proven to be a talent to be followed. She won the Sunday Times fiction prize in 2019 for the bestseller The Theory of Flight. She is a winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell prize, is a writer, filmmaker and an academic with a PhD from Stanford University, and directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti.

[Sharon Rodger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fitting conclusion to an extraordinary trilogy.

[Cassie · Rating 1 out of 5]

How is this book getting such high ratings though?!?

[Mish Middelmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a very deep level, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu holds the both/and of resistance and acceptance in this amazing final volume of her trilogy. Set in the ruins of the colonial Rhodesia and the painful birth of Zimbabwe, there is a surprisingly upbeat tone to the ironies of who gets thrown to the top of the heap during the turmoil and the awful truths about those who get trodden underfoot. It is, in some ways, simply a whodunnit mystery with an unshakeably wonderful Spokes Moloi as its star detective.

And it is so much more. Right through the trilogy I wondered how she could be so even-handed about the depredations visited upon her native land. In the second volume, The History of Man, she shows remarkable empathy and indeed kindness towards the archetypal colonial villain, Emil Coetzee. I was shocked by her apparent conclusion to the trilogy that

a place changes its character many times within its lifetime, and with each metamorphosis it asks those within it to change along with it. This is a choice ... A person can choose to let go and follow the tide of change, and a person can also choose to hold onto herself or himself.

Nobody can argue that such changes do happen and such choices do exist, but many would want to blame the changes on human agency rather than "a place changes its character." Also, the quote seems to suggest that resisting changes like colonisation are simply "holding onto oneself."

As if to seal her liberal even-handedness, she points out that Spokes' father and grandfather met their deaths because they resisted the colonial forces - as if this makes them wrong. So are people supposed to just acquiesce when injustice is perpetrated? Perhaps, a casual reader could even forget the details of how deeply unjust was the way each man had been condemned to death. Rest assured, I am pretty confident she doesn't want us to simply accept injustice or domination. I leave you to read the book to discover how she ultimately holds and brings together the twin truths - how humans do have to both accept the changes that come to a place and resist injustice with all their might.

I think she is gently pointing us towards a more nuanced view of social justice and change than I held when Zimbabwe gave me refuge during my own country's war of liberation in the 1980s. Somehow we need to embrace the truths of all the warring factions, recognise that the genesis of some change goes beyond particular human beings or groups - and still hold our commitment in heart and in action to working for greater social justice. And our modest hero Spokes does so with love, humility. compassion and a generous dose of wry humour.

Along the way, we meet a wide array of characters grappling with the changes that come with the end of formal settler-colonial rule in Zimbabwe in 1980, each drawn with astonishing detail and nuance - so familiar for me having lived through two such transitions in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. A few examples: from the mujibhas floundering without a raison d'etre once the war ends, through the black and white colleagues on the see-saw of who holds rank within government offices as well as social desirability, to Lukha who can't take his wild-hunter skills into the new world except through table football (foosball / iSlug), yet later manages to navigate between accusations of witchcraft and Spokes Moloi's solid brand of detective work.

At the end of the trilogy, I am blown away by the range of these three books with intertwined stories and characters, based in the same place and time in history, yet deeply different in content and style. If this isn't a tour de force I don't know what else is.

My reviews of the previous volumes are here:
* Volume 1, The Theory of Flight;
* Volume 2, The History of Man

[Nerine Dorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh. I'm not even sure where to begin with summing up The Quality of Mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, because there is so much to unpack, but I'll give it a good shot. Even though this is the third book in a trilogy, and I read it without reading the previous two, I didn't suffer for not having the back story – it works well as a standalone. And although this is not a long book, it is a big book – in terms of the may threads, the characters, and the subjects covered.

Events play out in a fictitious country that many southern Africans will relate to and recognise aspects of, and we encounter a large cast of characters who are connected by a common thread, more often than not in some way the enigmatic Emil Coetzee, whom we learn at the start has walked into the bush without his gun and his hat. So many lives in this story are defined by their interactions with this man, and almost all of them have been unsatisfying, offering us many flawed views of a man who remains a mystery. Who is the real Emil Coetzee? Ndlovu allows us to make up our own minds, based on how others frame him.

We chiefly follow the story of the police officer Spokes Moloi, who although he would like nothing more than to retire and live out his remaining years with his wonderful wife Loveness, he is haunted by an unsolved case – the murder of a young woman many years ago. Moloi is a man of great integrity, which he soon learns that it may not be enough to see things through to the end, when he encounters people who most certainly lack this virtue. (Thereby illustrating an age-old problem we face within southern Africa.)

All throughout, Ndlovu paints out seemingly random encounters, she magically weaves these back into the main narrative, with lives connecting in often surprising ways (and with great depth for all characters, good, grey, and not so good). Ndlovu shows that she understands the enormous complexity of a multicultural society grown out of the ashes of post-colonial times into something new, something deeply complex.

Her prose is lush and compelling, and she proves herself to be a keen observer of human nature, all blended together in a way that is almost cinematic in its approach to scenes and interactions. Touches of magical realism add a surreal edge to the narrative, that at times reminded me somewhat of Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and the Margarita – maybe because like Bulgakov's work, The Quality of Mercy is also incredibly difficult to define. There are, I feel, some elements of satire and occasional sly humour, but these are tempered with a fresh authenticity of voice and great compassion for the characters and subject matter treated.

If I have to say that there is one novel I've read this year that stands head and shoulders above all the others, then this is it. And if you're yet to read any fiction by an African author, you can most certainly start here.

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, the breathtaking conclusion to her multiple award-winning City of Kings trilogy, including The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, “Perhaps the most monumental trilogy to come out of Southern Africa.”—Afrocritik

Everyone saw Emil Coetzee drive into the bush the day the ceasefire was announced. Beatrice, busy consoling her friend Kuki over the loss of her son and marriage. Dikeledi, the postwoman who refuses to lean. Tom, the drunk who makes his living impersonating Emil in backroads bars. Vida de Villiers, stuck in a coin-toss choice. Saskia, the feisty reporter determined to ruin Emil’s name. Marion, the enigmatic lover he left behind. Mrs. Louisa Alcott, the lonely farm wife reading Mills & Boon romances in her best dress, waiting for her life to begin. But nobody saw him drive out of it.

So begins the investigation of Spokes Moloi, the first black chief inspector in the City of Kings, who on the eve of his retirement is handed one final crime: the possible murder of Mr. Coetzee, the notorious head of the Organization of Domestic Affairs, who disappeared on the same day the country's independence beckoned. In investigating Emil’s disappearance, Spokes' path collides with an assortment of witnesses with the best and worst of intentions—including a pair of corrupt investigators with an eye towards framing the guerrilla icon Golide Gumede for Emil’s murder, and the insatiable public, infatuated with Emil and unable to come to terms with the fact that the future they had so long anticipated had, at last, arrived.

With a nation in flux and his beloved wife Loveness forever present in his mind, Spokes’ investigation leads him back to the very beginning— and gives him one last chance to solve the twenty-year-old murder case that determined both the path of his life and destiny of his country.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I made a fatal error with this book. I accepted it not knowing it was the third of three mysteries. I was swept up in the prose, and absolutely loved the setting and cast, but couldn't figure out what the hell was going on or why.

Now, of course, I've read The Creation of Half-Broken People so I am all the more aware of how very little I *got* about the read. Start your journey with The Theory of Flight.

Catalyst Press lists the ebook for $9.99, and that would be great if you're current with the series.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book by a gifted storyteller. It is set in an unnamed African country prior to the time of its Independence. As the country transitions from a colonial state to a post colonial state, we are introduced to a host of fascinating characters of all races and political persuasions. Their lives are about to be transformed by the upheavals taking place in their country, especially that of Emil Coetzee, Head of the organisation of Domestic Affairs, who disappears on the day of the ceasefire.

Inspector Spokes Moloi is called upon to solve this case of possible murder, or suicide. Spokes’ impeccable reputation to solve all his cases, save one, has earned him promotion to the rank usually reserved for white men. He is nearing retirement much to the delight of his adored wife, Loveness, and they are planning on a move to the country where they have built a retirement home. However, Spokes given the task of unravelling the threads of Emil’s complicated life and recent disappearance, finds himself captive in a tangled web of political lies and deceit. Can he,at last, solve the mystery of Daisy’s disappearance as well as that of Emil?

All the colourful characters in this story are so well defined that the reader cares about the effect of the conflict on their lives - Emil Coetzee’s wife, Kuki, - his mistress, Marion, - the intelligence agents, Rutherford and Josept - and the attention seeking journalist Saskia, who is writing stories about Emil in his absence.

‘The Quality of Mercy’ is a masterpiece in the art of weaving a multitude of threads into an intriguing and cohesive story. I was captivated.

[Tim Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightful novel; beautifully written in such a way as to slow down your reading to take it all in, this is not a book that you skim! I attended a panel at this year’s Cape Town “Open Book” festival entitled “Beyond The Law” and this is the final book I’ve read of the three panellists. It’s a fascinating topic when you consider the writer’s imagined interpretation vs the reality of mercy explained by Dr Sean Davison in his autobiography, “The Price of Mercy”, where he assisted people with fatal, debilitating, painful illnesses to die with dignity.
It's a story that has its roots in family folklore, while the location is imagined, it is, surely, Zimbabwe and its transition to independence. It’s very much a story of principle, honour and equity. Effectively, circumstances ensure that in the main thread of the story there isn’t the favoured resolution, however, the virtuous lead character ensures that he can administer these values in other ways to mitigate the effects of the miscarriage of justice.
I really enjoyed reading a beautifully crafted novel, eloquent and, I suppose classic in it’s adherence to prose. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it and that it will receive greater plaudits than the above.

[Leya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book curtesy of my book club.
Gave it 2.5⭐ as first part is an easy read.

After completing this book, I had to sit and digest all that I had read🤔. This 1 book felt like it could have been broken up into 3 books.
There is the main over arching story of who killed Daisy. The first part of the story introduces us to the main character Spokes Moloi and several other characters and we sort of forget about the mystery of Daisy.

When the first part of the story concludes, ie the story of Saskia I thought wow the book is done🥳. But still had more page to get through before the actual end of the book😢. I enjoyed Saskia’s story and would have thought the book was great if we ended there but more characters kept being added extending the length of the book😳.
Some of the stories about the other characters where actually quite boring. When we discussed this at my book club was shocked to discover this is book 3 in a series. Would reading book 1 and 2 have helped. I don’t think so.

[Lesley Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE QUALITY OF MERCY by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
This enjoyable book starts with family folklore, and goes on to portray totally different characters in the ‘City of Kings’, and surrounding villages of Bulawayo, during 1980 in Zimbabwe. Around Independence Day, people in different circumstances and from all walks of life and cultures, there is the mystery that policeman Spokes Moloi – he who wears a fedora - is trying to solve. It is easy to relate to the different personalities that Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu has portrayed. There is humour, pathos and a great understanding of the times when life takes an entirely different route.
I am sorry I did not know about this author before and I am looking forward to reading her first two books The Theory of Flight and The History of Man. I really enjoyed this one.

[Janet Gericke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can not wait to get my hands on the other two. I adored the way it was written and the different stories coming together. The quality of Mercy is indeed impeccable - if you have read the book, you will understand that. 😊 It is a story of love, mercy, understanding, history and so much more.

A big recommended read.

[Tanya Potgieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the writers' style! The book is difficult to put down once you start.

[Chido wekwaGohori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Siphiwe is simply the best.

[Carol Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a gifted writer!! Although the book has many characters, she makes each one memorable so you don’t get lost in the story.
A terrific read!!

[Elmarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this expecting a mystery/ thriller. That is not what this is. This is an exquisitely written character driven narrative, with a vast and intricate network of characters connecting in more ways than you can dream of. I absolutely loved it.