Hardcover, 160 pages
English language
Published Jan. 1, 1981 by Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media.
For years, it had been what is called a "deteriorating situation." Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family - liberal whites - are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July - the shifts in character and relationships - gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.
A compact gem that says so much in so few pages. First published in 1981, it is still relevant in its portrayal of relations between races, the threat of race war, and the precariousness and duplicitousness of being a “liberal” in a changing society.
Everything in this book is difference and togetherness, borders and ideas of borders, the united and divided semblances of the human species, distilled into its true futility. Beautiful.
