Dog Eat Dog: A Novel

By Nicholas Mhlongo

Dog Eat Dog is a remarkable record of being young in a nation undergoing tremendous turmoil, and provides a glimpse into South Africa’s pivotal kwaito (South African hip-hop) generation and life in Soweto. Set in 1994, just as South Africa is making its postapartheid transition, Dog Eat Dog captures the hopes—and crushing disappointments—that characterize such moments in a nation’s history.

Raucous and darkly humorous, Dog Eat Dog is narrated by Dingamanzi Makhedama Njomane, a college student in South Africa who spends his days partying, skipping class, and picking up girls. But Dingz, as he is known to his friends, is living in charged times, and his discouraging college life plays out against the backdrop of South Africa’s first democratic elections, the spread of AIDS, and financial difficulties that threaten to force him out of school.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Release date: Jun 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780821444139

Reviews for Dog Eat Dog

[getupkid10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A humorous and raucous story about a black college student in post apartheid South Africa trying to make his way through college during a very turbulent time in South Africa's history. Dog Eat Dog similar to Urban Lit in the USA in that it follows an impoverished youth through the underbelly of society (the townships in this case), but different because it follows the student as he tries to get ahead at school in anyway possible. Though I felt the book was good, though not great, I will note that this book probably will resonate with the "kwaito generation" much more than with a white man living in the United States.