The Woman Next Door was a seminal novel by black, South Africa-based, Barbadian author Yewande Omotoso about two older women—one black and one white—living next door to each other at a time when the South African apartheid state was still raging in full force.

The setting is an upscale suburban neighborhood in the mid-twentieth century. The two main characters, Hortensia James and Marion Agostino, interestingly, are often as similar as they are different. Hortensia (dubbed "Hortensia the Horrible" by Marion) is black, childless, and a fighter who manages beat back racism and start a popular fabric design firm. Marion (called "Marion the Vulture" by Hortensia) is white, is widowed, and was a successful architect prior to birthing her four children. While the women have lived next to each other for two agonizing decades, hating each other, they both are mirrors of each other—tough, proud, and professional, the latter of which was particularly unusual for the time.

Things take an interesting turn when the two are forced to live together in the same house after Marion finds herself homeless and Hortensia becomes bedridden. This creates a perfect powder keg as the two spar and spat over everything from money to marriage, kids to career, race to reasoning. But eventually, hostility gives way to compassion as the two get to know one another and learn from one another to see the world through the other's eyes.

Arguing eventually becomes conversation and understanding becomes friendship in this story of forgiveness and unity as each woman's sadness over lost opportunities becomes the cement that brings them together.