A short life of the author
Lauren Beukes (born 1976) is a South African novelist who writes across genre boundaries with a ferocity and intelligence that has earned her an international readership. Her novels use science fiction, horror, and crime-thriller mechanics to explore contemporary South Africa — its violence, its inequality, its vitality — and she is one of the few genre writers whose work is taken seriously by both genre and literary audiences.
Life and Career
Beukes was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up during the final years of apartheid. She worked as a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and screenwriter before turning to fiction.
Her debut, Moxyland (2008), is a dystopian cyberpunk novel set in a future Cape Town controlled by corporations and surveillance technology. Zoo City (2010) — which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award — is set in an alternate Johannesburg where people who have committed crimes are magically bonded to animal familiars, and the “animalled” are forced to live in a crumbling inner-city slum called Zoo City. The novel follows Zinzi December, a former journalist with a sloth on her back, as she investigates the disappearance of a pop star. It is simultaneously a noir detective story, a fantasy of magical realism, and a sharp critique of post-apartheid South Africa’s class and racial dynamics.
The Shining Girls (2013) — about a Depression-era drifter who uses a time-traveling house to murder “shining” women across the twentieth century, and the survivor who hunts him — was her international breakthrough. The novel’s conceit — a time-traveling serial killer — is genre machinery in service of a serious argument about violence against women and the way that violence erases potential.
Broken Monsters (2014) is a horror-crime novel set in Detroit. Afterland (2020) is set in a near-future where a plague has killed 99% of men, and a mother and son try to cross the United States in disguise.
Key Works
- Zoo City (2010)
- The Shining Girls (2013)
- Broken Monsters (2014)
- Afterland (2020)
Collecting Beukes
Moxyland first edition (Angry Robot/Jacana Media, 2008) — debut — is scarce, $50–$150. The South African first edition (Jacana, 2008) precedes the Angry Robot edition. Zoo City first edition (Angry Robot, 2010) signed brings $50–$125 — the Clarke Award cachet adds value. Beukes signs at international genre conventions. South African first editions are the true firsts for several titles and are collected separately.