Ways of Connecting: On Writing That Marries the Psychological, the Personal and the Political

Faraaz Mahomed speaks with Damon Galgut about his debut novel Mother/Land and the way his work in psychology, mental health, and human rights intersects with fiction. The novel moves between Cape Town and New York and follows Salim, a character marked by displacement, fractured identity, and estrangement from his past. Mahomed connects these themes to his own family history, particularly the forced removal of his great-grandfather under South Africa’s Group Areas system, whose effects continued across generations. He also points to movements such as Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter as part of the novel’s political landscape. The book began with the image of a Muslim cemetery, which eventually led him toward questions of dispossession, memory, and inherited trauma. Mahomed cites writers including Abdulrazak Gurnah, Hisham Matar, and Tsitsi Dangarembga as examples of authors who make political realities deeply personal. He also describes writing as a way of giving language and form to anxiety and psychic unrest, allowing what might otherwise remain uncontained to exist somewhere outside the self.

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