Book Launch of Call it a Difficult Night by Mishka Hoosen

David Krut Bookstore and Deep South invites you to the Johannesburg launch of
Call it a difficult night by Mishka Hoosen 

Date: 19th April 2016
Time: 18:00
Venue: David Krut Bookstore, 151 Jan Smuts Avenue Parkwood, 2193

Institutionalised after a ‘final break’, a young woman remembers in sharp detail her disturbing childhood visions, which have become overwhelming by the time she is at high school and university. When she finally gets a diagnosis a doctor explains that she is likely to be either demented or brain dead by the time she’s 30.

Call it a difficult night is a work of empathy, observation and lyricism, by an author with the capacity to describe great joy and great suffering.

Reviewing the book in the Sunday Times, Bongani Kona wrote:
“Moving between places, time zones, and modes of writing – fiction, essay, memoir, poetry – Call it a difficult night chronicles a young woman’s struggle with mental health.[…] The dehumanising violence of psychiatry and psychiatric institutions is a strong theme in this brilliant, fragmentary novel. The violence happens out of sight – behind high walls and access-controlled gates. The narrator is shunted from one psychiatric institution to the next and plied with an antipsychotic drug.”

Mishka Hoosen was born in Johannesburg. She completed high school at Interlochen Arts Academy in the USA, and has an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. She is currently studying anthropology, with special interests in gender, violence, trauma, and folklore. Call it a difficult night is her first book.