Life Among the (not-Quite) Native Ohioans

Cion
by Zakes Mda
Picador, 2007,
320 pages, $14

In his first novel Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda introduced readers to Toloki, a poor man living in an unnamed South African city who decides to take up mourning professionally.  In exchange for coins, Toloki wanders from one funeral to the next, grieving for those who were lost during the country’s bloody transition from apartheid to democracy.