The Creation of Half-Broken People, by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

A modern Gothic story set on the African continent, The Creation of Half-Broken People tells the tale of a nameless woman plagued by visions. She works for the Good Foundation and its museum, a place filled with artefacts from the family’s exploits in Africa, the Good family members all being descendants of Captain John Good, of King Solomon’s Mines fame.

Our heroine is happy with her association with the Good family, until one day she comes
across a group of people protesting outside the museum. Instigating the protesters is an ancient woman, who our heroine knows is not real. The nameless woman knows too
that the secrets of her past have returned. After this encounter, she finds herself living
first in an attic and then in a haunted castle, her life anything but normal as her own
intangible inheritance unfolds through the women who inhabit her visions.

With a knowing nod to classics of the Gothic genre, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu weaves the
threads of a complex colonial history into the present as she examines the collusion of
colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism in creating and normalizing a certain kind of
womanhood.