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Elleke Boehmer

Elleke Boehmer

Elleke Boehmer, born in Durban on the Indian Ocean, is a novelist, critic, and short-story writer. Her novels include Screens Against the Sky (1990, David Higham Prize shortlisted), Bloodlines (2000, SANLAM Prize shortlisted), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015, winner of the Olive Schreiner Award for Prose). Her most recent publications are Indian Arrivals, Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-century readings and the Australian edition of The Shouting in the Dark, and other southern writing, which came out from UWA Publishing in early 2019. She has published a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

'Supermarket Love' by Elleke Boehmer

ABR Fiction 19 September 2019
When I walk by the security-office door on my break and it’s open, I snatch a look. The supermarket guards keep the door open when it’s hot, over forty. Right now, mid-February, that’s most of the time. ‘You must get boiling with that headscarf on,’ my friend Skye says, almost whispering. We’ve been friends for weeks before she says this. I’ve seen the other girls wear strappy tops ... (read more)