What We Lose

A short, intense and profoundly moving debut novel about race, identity, sex and death – from one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35
Thandi is a black woman, but often mistaken for Hispanic or Asian.

She is American, but doesn’t feel as American as some of her friends.

She is South African, but doesn’t belong in South Africa either.

Her mother is dying.

“'The debut novel of the year ... visceral, cerebral, provocative, elegiac. One can't help but think of Clemmons as in the running to be the next-generation Claudia Rankine' Vogue 'Luminescent' Independent 'A lovely little headrush of a novel ... if you enjoyed Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing then try this' Sunday Times Style 'Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibition - wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons's debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored' Paul Beatty 'What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice . . . acutely moving' Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland 'I loved this beautiful, honest and entrancing meditation on love, loss and the relationships that enrich and complicate our lives' Bernardine Evaristo 'Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy, What We Lose is a lyrical ode to the complexities of race, love, illness, parenthood, and the hairline fractures they leave behind. Zinzi Clemmons has gifted the reader a rare and thoughtful emotional topography, a map to the mirror regions of their own heart' Alexandra Kleeman 'I love how Zinzi Clemmons complicates identity in What We Lose. Her main character is both South African and American, privileged and outsider, driven by desire and gutted by grief. This is a piercingly beautiful first novel' Danzy Senna”

‘The debut novel of the year … visceral, cerebral, provocative, elegiac. One can’t help but think of Clemmons as in the running to be the next-generation Claudia Rankine’ Vogue

‘Luminescent’ Independent

‘A lovely little headrush of a novel … if you enjoyed Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing then try this’ Sunday Times Style

‘Bracingly clear-eyed … the tension between her steady prose and turbulent emotions is beautifully sustained’ Daily Mail

‘Highly original. Zinzi Clemmons deftly explores grief, sex and identity’ Elle

‘Concise and powerful. This original and challenging debut is a must-read for fans of literary fiction and memoir’ Bookriot

‘Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit – wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons’s debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored’ Paul Beatty

‘What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice . . . acutely moving’ Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland

'I loved this beautiful, honest and entrancing meditation on love, loss and the relationships that enrich and complicate our lives’ Bernardine Evaristo

Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Paris Review Daily, Transition and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor to Literary Hub. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College.

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