Lives Between Walls

Saba Is Finished

There are books you write.

And then there are books that write their way through you.

Saba has been that kind of book for me.

It began as a question, then became a voice, then a presence. Over time, it grew into something far more layered than I first imagined: a story about love, desire, marriage, memory, sacrifice, and the tension between the centre and the periphery — not only in the city, but within the self.

Set in South Africa, Saba is a literary novel with speculative elements. But more than that, it is a deeply personal work — one that allowed me to explore many of the themes that continue to shape both my writing and my architectural thinking: emotion, place, longing, identity, and the hidden structures that govern our lives.

Like much of my work on Lives Between Walls, this novel asks what happens when space is not just physical, but emotional. When the places we occupy begin to reflect the fractures, desires, and contradictions we carry inside us.

Finishing this manuscript has been both joyful and painful. Some stories entertain. Others confront. Saba has done both. It has asked difficult questions of me as a writer, and perhaps even more difficult ones as a person.

But now, after all the drafts, detours, discoveries, and doubts, I can finally say it:

Saba is finished.

The next step is the publishing journey.

Whatever happens from here, I am grateful that this story exists. Grateful that I stayed with it long enough to hear what it was really trying to say. And grateful to the readers, friends, and fellow travellers who continue to follow my work as I explore the spaces between architecture, storytelling, and emotional life.

More to come soon.

— Sibusiso Lwandle