"Resoketswe Manenzhe's writing is exquisite. In SCATTERLINGS, she breathtakingly weaves myth and impossible love with South African politics and history. This is a book to be read and reread." – Ayesha Harruna Attah, author of The Hundred Wells of Salaga and Zainab Takes New York
"Elegant, mythical, heart-wrenching, and beautiful, SCATTERLINGS conveys the profound impact of racism on one South African family." – Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, award-winning author of The Revisioners
"Set in South Africa in 1927, this powerful novel chronicles the unravelling of a biracial family in the wake of the Immorality Act, which outlawed sexual relations between white and Black people. . . . Manenzhe situates this tragic tale within the broader context of the displacement and abuse of Africans caused by colonialism and the slave trade, but her achievement is to humanize the victims of that legacy, in a story that feels like an act of restoration."
– The New Yorker
"With a raconteur's rhythm, Manenzhe, a South African villager and storyteller, brings to life a painful piece of history, enriched with myths and lore." – Washington Post
"In South Africa, tragedy strikes a young family - the mother Black, the father white - in this family history told on an epic scale." – Vanity Fair
"Manenzhe debuts with a poetic and wrenching story of one family's upheaval... the novel feels both grounded and timeless, as Manenzhe fuses this tragedy of South Africa's segregationist policies with a long tradition of folklore. There's great heft to this universal story." – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Weaving myths and journal entries with expressive prose, Resoketswe Manenzhe delivers a powerful novel exploring ancestry, belonging, and home." – Christian Science Monitor
"South African writer Manenzhe's debut looks back to an especially cruel moment in history when sexual relations between Blacks and Whites were pronounced unlawful, threatening prison for the adults involved....Manenzhe's poetic narrative, sometimes dreamy, piercing, and lyrical...is threaded with heartache and suffering as well as ancestral myth and symbolism. An elegiac view of colonial and racial injustice." – Kirkus Reviews