The Comrade’s Wife

Claire is less cynical. ‘Fall in love, if you must. But do your research. And meet his people early on. They’ll give you a sense of who he is.’ Solid advice. And ultimately, this is how I found myself on a flight to Bloemfontein one Friday afternoon.

An instant classic, the lies and betrayals of love and party politics are told in gorgeous prose with an ear for our time’s intimate and public language. The Comrade’s Wife follows a turbulent marriage between a rising politician and an academic, told through her life and lens.

‘Tender, delightful, frightening. A testimony to Boswell’s inexhaustible vision.’ – Pumla Dineo Gqola, author of Female Fear Factory

‘Wonderfully plotted, emotionally rich, clever, and full of intrigue… Find a quiet, comfortable corner and settle in because you won’t want to leave Anita’s superb company until she’s finished her story.’ – Nadia Davids, author of An Imperfect Blessing

‘What a thrilling read! I could not put it down.’ – Terry-Ann Adams, author of White Chalk and Those Who Live in Cages

‘Some politicians are as immoral at home as they are in the halls of government. The Comrade’s Wife is a wonderful account of the political made personal.’ – Rehana Rossouw, author of New Times and What Will People Say

Barbara Boswell is a writer and scholar from Cape Town, a city which inspires much of her fiction. An Associate Professor of English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town, Boswell is the author of Grace: A Novel (2017), winner of the UJ Prize for Debut Creative Writing, And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism (2020) and Lauretta Ngcobo: Writing as the Practice of Freedom (2022). At present, Barbara is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

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