We Inherit the Fire

One of Ms. Magazine’s Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2026

“Incisive. . . . The story builds to an insightful depiction of the complexities of mother-daughter dynamics. As Kewame reflects, ‘We love like this, the women in this family: with tenderness and fury.’ This will move readers.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Kagiso Lesego Molope writes with striking precision and intelligence, crafting prose that moves like poetry while speaking directly to the heart. This novel of the bonds and betrayals between mothers and daughters and the scars of a changing country sparks like a flame: dangerous and beautiful. Deftly weaving the less told stories of young women and the haunted memories of political prisoners in South Africa, We Inherit the Fire asks what it means to be truly known amidst the collective struggle.”
—Janika Oza, author of A History of Burning

“We Inherit the Fire is a dazzling and poignant portrait of intergenerational love, trauma and resilience, about a hero mother and her teen daughter made strangers by apartheid’s violence. A story that will leave you fired up and holding your heart at the same time.”
—Farzana Doctor, author of Seven and The Beauty of Us

“Blazingly brilliant. In We Inherit the Fire, Kagiso Lesego Molope brews a simmering coming of age story about the mother of a nation alight with violent, racist, and colonial oppression. While apartheid has ended, Lesego Molope reminds us a nascent state is not a utopian, static place to arrive at. She deftly situates the reader in intergenerational transitions from childhood to adulthood, using youthful longing and nostalgia and the struggles of motherhood to sharply question whether habitual and ongoing suppression should be fought through quiet dignity or by professing legitimate anger. She asks us, where we find ourselves in repressive situations, what costs we are willing to bear and complicates ideals of the mother figure through a fiery character drawn as iconic, heroic, rationally hostile yet traumatized.”
—Jamie Chai Yun Liew, author of Dandelion

“To the world, Kewame ‘Dolly’ Malaka is a freedom fighter, a symbol of unyielding resistance. To her daughter, she is both formidable and fragile, scarred by prison and loss. Amid the final tremors of apartheid, We Inherit the Fire is a haunting portrait of two lives bound by history and undone by its wounds; a mother and daughter wading through love, rage, and the unextinguishable blaze of memory.”
—francesca ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread