Writer, Author &
Visual Storyteller
Glass Tower
Leilah meets Frankie, and the two misfits become the closest of friends at their new school – until secrets, betrayal, and sexuality drive them apart…
It’s 1997, three years after the official end of Apartheid in South Africa. Two girls from very different backgrounds – Leilah, who is mixed race, and Frankie, who is white – are drawn together when they start at a new school, one that remains racially divided despite the country’s new laws. Their friendship deepens and intensifies before suddenly falling apart when each tells the other a secret. The girls must grapple with young womanhood alone, leaving Leilah with only her troubled family to fall back on.
Glass Tower is a powerful story of two young people on a journey of sexual hurt and personal discovery which asks questions of who we are and why we love, set against a new and confusing social order.
Karen Jennings,
Booker long-listed Author
"A beautiful and carefully constructed narrative about sexual abuse, family relationships and lingering racism at the dawn of the new South Africa. Complex issues are dealt with thoughtfully in simple and sensitive prose to create a moving experience."
Debora Patta,
CBS Journalist
"The characters in Glass Tower are so finely drawn - I loved and hated each one simultaneously. It's beautifully written and achingly sad, encapsulating teen angst that is at once so familiar. Not just another coming-of-age novel, this is a devastating story of intergenerational trauma set against the context of racism and abuse. I can't overstate how much I loved reading it."
Jane Rosenthal,
News24 Journalist
"This engaging novel is an easy read, yet complex and deep enough to stay with you. Isaacs' narrative is fluent and serious; she's a talented writer with a great ear for dialogue."
Photography
A Bit About Me
I'm a writer, author and visual storyteller based in Cape Town, South Africa. After graduating from a psychology degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2009, I shifted my professional focus to portrait and documentary photography, creating safe spaces for South African women to share their everyday struggles and stories. Boosted by the voices of the women I photographed, I was able to explore my own relationship to issues of identity, gender based violence and the impact of infertility on a woman’s sense of self.
In 2018 I invited victims of GBV to be photographed as a way of sharing their stories of abuse, and ten women stepped forward. I turned the lessons I learnt from that portrait series into a 2019 TEDx talk, which centred on survivor shame and its implications for the expression of vulnerability. I was accepted into UCT’s Creative Writing MA program in 2020 and graduated in 2022 with a distinction. My debut novel Glass Tower was published in 2023 - it won that year's Island Prize for debut fiction from Africa and has been long listed for the 2024 Sunday Times Literary Fiction Award. Currently I'm working towards my masters in psychological research at UCT while writing my second novel.
