Bom Boy

Wandering in Cape Town, Leke stalks people, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of a cure. But he isn't sure what ails him--loneliness, or the family curse.

Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove.

Leke's search to break the curse leads him to strange places.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. This is her debut novel and was first published in in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.