We’re delighted to announce the launch of TONGUES BOOK CLUB: an occasional series of conversations featuring authors whose works provocatively challenge the status quo, inspiring imaginative ways of engaging with the burning issues of our time.
The book we’re celebrating in our first ever conversation, It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way by Cape Town-based novelist Alistair Mackay, certainly embodies all that. Set in Cape Town in the near future, it’s about three queer friends trying to navigate an increasingly fractured, violent and unstable world ravaged by climate collapse, rampant inequality and increasingly intrusive tech. The book is available as a paperback in all good bookstores across South Africa, and as an ebook anywhere in the world.
Please join us — at a computer near you — on Sunday 10th April (14.00 ET, 19.00 BST, 20.00 CEST/SAST) for this hour-long event. Alistair will be in conversation with TONGUES’s editor, Alexander Matthews, and we’ll be asking audience questions too (email yours to [email protected]; you’ll also be able to share them in the chat on the day).
To attend, please register via Zoom.
Author photograph by Catherine Mac
ABOUT THE NOVEL
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way tells the story of three queer friends trying to navigate an increasingly fractured, violent and unstable world.
Within a few short years, climate collapse leaves Cape Town a vast and arid slum. Those who can afford to leave have fled to the New Temperate Zones, and to The Citadel on Signal Hill, ensconced in a climate-controlled dome behind The Wall. But at what cost? Here, residents pass their days lost in virtual reality, courtesy of a biotech implant connected to their minds, refusing to see what goes on all around them.
In the present day, before the Change, Luthando sees the way the world is headed and tries to avert disaster, but his activism leads to clashes with the government. As their lives begin to unravel, his life partner, Viwe, becomes embroiled in the religious end-of-days fanaticism sweeping the city. And their friend Malcolm fears that his work developing mental and emotional software is being used for sinister purposes.
A profoundly moving story of resilience and tenderness, and our capacity for love in the face of fear.
Find a paperback copy: from Exclusive Books, The Book Lounge, Wordsworth Books, Bargain Books, Graffiti Books, Takealot, Loot, and Raru — and it can be ordered from your local indie bookstore. As an Ebook: Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Snapplify.
Check out the playlist for the book on Spotify, and follow It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way on Instagram.
ABOUT ALISTAIR
Alistair Mackay is a South African writer interested in exploring queerness, marginalisation, social justice and climate change. Born in 1984 and raised in Johannesburg, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and an MA in Politics from Edinburgh University. For many years he worked in a marketing strategy consultancy, and he survived exactly one year in political communications. He’s loved writing all his life, from illustrated adventure stories as a child to cringe-worthy, angsty teenage poetry, to business writing, content strategy and news features.
He wrote a regular humour, dating and lifestyle column for LGBTQ+ news site mambaonline for a number of years, as well as a branding column for marklives. His short fiction has been published in Commonwealth Writers’ adda magazine, Brittle Paper, New Contrast, The Kalahari Review, Kabaka Magazine, and Penny, as well as in the anthologies Queer Africa II, The Other, and Queer Africa: Selected Stories.
Alistair lives in Cape Town with his husband, pug, and enough house plants to restart the ecosystem after it all collapses.