Her father's last wish was a simple coffin. Death has more complicated ideas.
Kgosi Morabe has spent forty years being the one who holds the secrets of others while keeping her own buried. She's a PR professional: Invisibility is the job. But when her father dies and the family descends on their Sandton mansion in a chaos of designer mourning dresses, four live cows, and a half-brother nobody knew existed, Kgosi finds herself at the centre of something she can't spin her way out of.
Because her father cheated death once, in a Soweto street in 1976. And now Death wants something back.
Ferociously funny, steeped in Yoruba mythology, and set inside the gilded dysfunction of Johannesburg's Black Diamond elite, Death Rattle is a debut that announces a major new voice in African speculative fiction. Grief is a performance, class is a weapon, and the goddess Oya has been watching from the storm clouds all along.
Some inheritances you don't get to refuse.
Death Rattle | Lebogang Matseke
Lebogang Neo Matseke is a Johannesburg-based author, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Her creative work is rooted in African cosmologies, ancestral storytelling, and reflections on identity, grief, and redemption. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Film from Syracuse University in the United States, a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from India, and a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand.
She believes that stories are spirit-work — a way to give voice to what history forgets, and to honour the echoes that still walk with us.
