Abstract
"The Garden Party" is the second chapter of Zakes Mda's fourth novel The Madonna of Excelsior which was published in 2001. The author was born in Hershel in 1948 and grew up in Lesotho where his family emigrated for political reasons. He left South Africa in 1963 for the United States where he studied literature at Ohio University, and lived abroad for 22 years before returning to his birth country in 1995. He is now a dramatist at the Market Theatre of Johannesburg and a professor in the Creative Department at Ohio University. His work has been mainly influenced by his personal experience and by the diversity of the African tradition. Zakes Mda's The Madonna of Excelsior deals with the life of the small farming community of the town of Excelsior during two periods: "now", that is to say 1971 and "then", right after the abolition of apartheid. Each chapter starts with the description of a painting from an artist priest, Father Frans Claerhout, who lived in the Free State town of Tweespruit.
