- Average
- R 219.00
- Lowest seen
- R 219.00
- Highest seen
- R 279.00
- Last change
- R 60.00
- First indexed
- 05 Aug 2026
- Vendor
- Takealot
Written in the six weeks following the sudden death of Mat, Ferguson's
soul mate, Swift is a memoir that unfolds, breath by breath, as the
narrator swoops through shock, fury, unspeakable sorrow, and an
almost mythic sense of responsibility to save the life of a Swift, that she
rescued seven days before her beloved left Earth.
She somehow keeps the half-dead Swift alive through the blur of grief,
but she has no real clue what's she's doing. Mat was the one who knew
all about birds. He was the man with the heart of feathers who identified
the rescue bird as a Little Swift when she brought it home.
Mat told her many things about the bird; that it never touches the
ground, that it eats, sleeps, drinks and mates on the wing. That it's a
bird that can fly for up to two years without landing.
In the aftermath of his shocking departure, and all its absurd
bureaucratic requirements, an unlikely long-distance Swift guide
appears in Ferguson's DMs on old Twitter. Her name is Hannah, a
hardcore Swift activist from the UK. Ferguson is mesmerised by the
Swift Queen's ethereal beauty and the tattoos of Swifts across her back.
An unspoken pact is forged between the two women across the oceans
and mountains; a pact that takes on mythical proportions.
If the Swift doesn't fly within a short window period, it will refuse to eat
and eventually starve itself to death.
With time running out for the bird to fledge, its release becomes not only
urgent, but hugely symbolic. Grief insists on making meaning where it
can.
The stories we tell ourselves are everything.
Set in a South African fire-scorched landscape, Swift is a unique and
brilliant meditation on love, future projection, faith without doctrine, and
the strange intelligence grief unlocks when the heart is cracked wide
open. A magically unsettling and luminous memoir about release - and
the moment two souls collide and take flight.
Melinda Ferguson is a South African
bestselling author and maverick awardwinning publisher.
Swift is her fifth memoir. She resides
in Cape Town and in the Breedekloof.
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