Mia Arderne
Mia Arderne is a Cape Town-based writer with bylines in New Frame, Mail & Guardian, The Vrye Weekblad, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, VISI, GQ, City Press and more. Her writing explores the politics of gender, race, identity, sexuality and mental health. Her debut novel, Mermaid Fillet, published by Kwela (NB Publishers) in 2020, has been long-listed for the Sunday Times-CNA Literary Awards.
"Mermaid Fillet is so vivid, so hallucinatory, so deft and blistering and uniquely, maybe even perversely* South Africa (ZA). I’m halfway through and I love it. South Africa needs more fiction like this.”
“Arderne goes hard on imagination and contemporary CT. There’s nothing better than local invention, especially when someone doesn’t hold back. It’s also part Kaaps and I love the challenge it brings to the English hegemonic chokehold we endure in literature. She took changes and it’s painfully honest to the point of brutal. This is the book that tops my list without a doubt.”
“Arderne’s acute observations of contemporary South Africa and a writing style that can be likened to the sensibilities of Quentin Tarantino and Zora Neale Hurston, in some ways. The scenes jump across characters and time much like Taratino’s Pulp Fiction.”
“If you believe that books should sometimes shock you right out of your comfort zone, this is a must read. If you prefer harmless little love stories, more on. Dala what you must”
"The chapter headings read like songs on a Kendrick Lamar album: Oblivion, Trash, Lust, Chise and Devotion. Each subheading within these overarching chapters is named after the characters.”
“Mermaid Fillet is a poesklap of a book. And if that sentence offends you, you probably shouldn’t read it.”
"Dis Reservoir Dogs in Ravensmead, RocknRolla in Belhar"
“One-liners so aanloklik soos dun lyntjies wit poeier op glas”
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