Leonora Meriel

Writing literary, contemporary, speculative and historical fiction that unfolds the mysteries of the universe, book by book

The Woman Behind the Waterfall

This garden, this spring, this dazzling sunlight, the sound of a solitary bird singing, feels like a dream shimmering around me. The white lilac, my thin dress, the constant deep smell of Ukrainian earth… I look up into the light. Streaks of memory now forming against a background of falling gold.

Unity Game High Res

The Unity Game

What if the Earth you knew was just the beginning?

And Breathe Hi Res

And Breathe

What if your life was spinning out of control? Where would you turn?

Mbaqanga Nights Cover

Mbaqanga Nights

When all your options are impossible – how do you decide?

Leonora Meriel is a novelist writing literary, contemporary, speculative and historical fiction. Her work explores the boundaries between reality and the imagination, and her books have been acclaimed by Kirkus Reviews as “ambitious and thought-provoking,” writer Esther Freud as “strange and beautiful” and by Richmond Magazine as “a literary work of art.” Her latest novel Mbaqanga Nights, set between the protest jazz of apartheid South Africa and Jewish Ukraine at the turn of the Nineteenth Century, has been called “a time-jumping… story of oppression and resilience” by Kirkus Reviews.

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