LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Hortensia and Marion are next door neighbours in a charming, bougainvillea-laden Cape Town suburb. One is black, one white. Both are successful women with impressive careers behind them. Both have recently been widowed. Both are in their eighties. And both are sworn enemies, sharing hedge and hostility pruned with zeal.

But one day an unforeseen event forces the women together. Could long-held mutual loathing transform into friendship?

Love thy neighbour? Easier said than done.

Wit, charm and playful energy... An insightful and fascinating diptych of two women, with the history of colonialism and slavery lurking in the backgroundHerald

Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, moving to South Africa with her family in 1992. She is the author ofBom Boy, published in South Africa in 2011. In 2012 she won the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author and was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize. In 2013 she was a finalist in the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, where she writes and has her own architectural practice.