Onion Tears

Khadeejah is a hard-working and stubborn first-generation Indian woman who longs for her beloved homeland and often questions what she is doing on the tip of Africa. At 37, her daughter Summaya is struggling to reconcile her South African and Indian identities, while Summaya’s own daughter, eleven-year-old Aneesa, is a girl who has some difficult questions of her own. Is her mother lying to her about her father’s death? Why won’t she tell her what really happened? Gradually, the past merges with the present as the novel meanders through their lives, uncovering the secrets people keep, the words they swallow, and the emotions they elect to mute. For this family, faintly detectable through the sharp spicy aromas that find their way out of Khadeejah’s kitchen, the scent of tragedy is always threatening. Eventually, it will bring this family together. If not, it will tear them apart.

Shubnum Khan is an author and artist. Onion Tears was first published in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing and the University of Johannesburg Debut Fiction Prize. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney’s, HuffPost, Oprah Magazine, The Sunday Times, Marie Claire, and others. Shubnum has a degree in Media Studies and a Masters in English from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her essay collection, How I Accidentally Became a Global Stock Photo, was published in South Africa and India in 2021. Shubnum's novel, The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil, was published to critical and reader acclaim in 2024.