ABOUT THE NOVEL

In this seminal novel of conflict and attempted reconciliation, we follow Kitso whose father had expelled him from the family home in Soweto on account of his youthful homosexual encounter with Themba, a local friend, but who returns for the first time since that trauma to attend his father’s funeral. The background to all that happens is the family’s membership in the Jehovah Witnesses church and its very strict and exclusivist interpretation of human relations, particularly its repressive control of sexuality.

Kitso brings his young son, Ntokozo, on the trip, but practically abandons the boy to the care of his brother’s wife for the few days that he is home. Overwhelmed by the shock and tension of again inter-acting with family and friends – including a now married, heterosexual Themba – Kitso sets out on a series of hard-core gay sex adventures. In addition, his heavy drinking and general submergence in self-destructive behaviour further alienates him from the family and eventually sees him leave with little to show for his return. 

No Poison No Paradise is thus a work charting pain, loss, reckless pursuit of pleasure and the anguish of dissolution as Kitso struggles to come to terms with sundered relationships and attempts to find a place of refuge and joy in a world of rejection and ambivalence.   

There’s a loaded silence now. She waits for me to start talking. She wants to know

 if I salvaged anything from this trip upcountry, but I choose to just look at her.

     For a while now, she’s been nagging me, suggesting that I fix things with my family

 and move back home. She and I know that, later in the year, when her marriage

is finalised, she won’t be able to help me out anymore. The four month’s rent she paid 

for me when I got let go was probably her last act of mercy. But home no longer exists 

for me; the bridge has collapsed. Home would require that I resurrect the many parts 

of me that I have long killed. I am not willing to make that sacrifice. And so, I just hand her Ntokozo’s travel bag.

     “We’ll talk,” I tell her, and say goodbye.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nzeru Aquilar Nsaí (she/he/they) — whose work has been published in The Bookends Review, Chestnut Review and Iskanchi Magazine — lives in Meadowlands, Soweto. No Poison No Paradise is their first novel and was longlisted for the 2022/2023 Island Prize.