The Reactive

Heralded in the author's native South Africa as "the hottest novel of the year," The Reactive is a clear-eyed and compassionate depiction of a young HIV+ man grappling with the sudden death of his younger brother, for which he feels unduly responsible.

Lindanathi and his friends—Cecelia and Ruan—make their living working low-paying jobs and selling anti-retroviral drugs (during the period in South Africa before ARVs became broadly distributed). In between, they huff glue, drift in and out of parties, and traverse the streets of Cape Town, where they observe the grave material disparities of their country. A mysterious masked man appears seeking to buy their surplus of ARVs, an offer that would present the three with the opportunity to escape their environs, while at the same time forcing Lindanathi to confront his path, and finally, his past.

With brilliant, shimmering prose, Ntshanga has delivered a redemptive, ambitious, and unforgettable first novel.

* Winner of The Betty Trask Award (2018)
* Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize Finalist
* Etisalat Prize for Literature Longlist
* One of the Best Books of the Year 2016 —Men's Journal, Flavorwire, City Press, The Sunday Times, The Star, This is Africa, Africa's a Country, Sunday World

"[The Reactive is] a searing, gorgeously written account of life, love, illness, and death in South Africa. With exquisite prose, formal innovation, and a masterful command of storytelling, Ntshanga illustrates how some young people navigated the dusk that followed the dawn of freedom in South Africa and humanizes the casualties of the Mbeki government's fatal policies on HIV & AIDS."
—Naomi Jackson, Poets & Writers

"The Reactive is not only a beautiful novel, as fierce and formally innovative as it is lyrical and moving, but also a call to inhabit as well as to critique the symbolic structures of our world that can both empower and betray us."
—Nathan Goldman, Full Stop

"Woozy, touching... a novel that delivers an unexpected love letter to Cape Town, painting it as a place of frustrated glory. The Reactive often teems with a beauty that seems to carry on in front of its glue-huffing wasters despite themselves."
—Marian Ryan, Slate

"Masande Ntshanga is a wildly talented writer. Get in on his brilliance now so you can claim you always knew he'd be great."
—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

"One of South Africa’s most promising new voices... Ntshanga weaves a rollercoaster ride of a story that will leave you questioning the meaning of family, despair, and hope."
—Ayiba Magazine

"[The Reactive] takes place during a period of social and political tumult that mirrors that mental turmoil of the lead character, and it makes for an extremely sharp, challenging read. This is not a book about a fast-paced, compelling plot. It's a character study, an emotional journey, and right from the opening line, it's a brutal indictment"
—XOJane.com

"Sharp and affecting... [Ntshanga] directs the story with an amazing precision of language that few writers can achieve in a lifetime of work. With a style all his own, Ntshanga animates despair and agitation in a collage of moments, memories and landscapes that speak volumes of a exigent moment in South African history. Ntshanga grapples with the past and the too-real present with grace, but not clemency, with hope, but not too much."
—Alibi

"With The Reactive, [Ntshanga] has created an immersive and powerful portrait of drug use, community, and health issues by exploring what it was like to be young, black, South African, and HIV positive in the early aughts."
—VICE

"[The Reactive] is an affecting, slow-burning novel that gives a fantastic sense of a particular place and time, and of the haunted inner life of its protagonist."
—Tobias Carroll, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"This novel about an HIV+ man who mourns the death of his brother in Cape Town is shaping up to be one of the best debuts of 2016."
—Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire

Masande Ntshanga is the author of the acclaimed novels The Reactive, shortlisted for the 2015 Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and longlisted for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and Triangulum, shortlisted for the 2020 Nomo Awards for Best Novel. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Award (2018), winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. He was born in East London in 1986 and graduated with a degree in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies from UCT, where he became a creative writing fellow, completing his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation. He received a Fulbright Award, an NRF Freestanding Masters scholarship, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in The White Review, Chimurenga, VICE and n + 1. He has also written for Rolling Stone magazine.