Zoë Wicomb, Acclaimed South African Author, Dies at 76 NYT | Top Stories Rebecca Chao 1 November 2025 at 22:01 In novels and short stories, she delivered sharp observations of the constraints and contradictions of apartheid and its aftermath. © Sophie Bassouls/Bridgeman ImagesZoë Wicomb in 2010. “She explored in one book after another the modalities of South African experience, in language whose wit and irony masked a deep seriousness,” the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee observed.