Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize,2019
In White Boy Running, Christopher Hope explored how it felt and looked to grow up in a country gripped by an 'absurd, racist insanity'. On a road trip thirty years later, Hope goes in search of today's South Africa; post the evils of apartheid, but also post the dashed hopes and dreams of Mandela, of a future when race and colour would not count. He finds a country still in the grip of a ruling party intent only on caring for itself, to the exclusion of all others; a country where racial divides are deeper than ever. As the old imperial idols of Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger are literally pulled from their pedestals in a mass yearning to destroy the past, Hope ponders the question: what next? Framed as a travelogue, this is a darkly comic, powerful and moving portrait of South Africa - an elegy to a living nation, which is still mad and absurd.
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 9781786490612
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 315 g
Dimensions: 200 x 130 x 30 mm
Edition: Main
Hope writes with extraordinary exuberance and invention. - Literary Review
Marvellously chilling - The Times on 'White Boy Running'
Breathtaking to the very end - Guardian on 'My Mother's Lovers'
A brilliant, compelling novel about innocence and betrayal - The Times for 'My Mother's Lovers'
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