Karoo Boy

Readers familiar with South African idiom will feel right at home in this first-person, present-tense story of a white boy's coming-of-age at the height of apartheid in the 1970s. But even those who don't know the meaning of kaffirboetie, tackies, and hambawill recognize the aching personal truth and political horror. When Dad kills Douglas"twin in a freak accident with a cricket-ball on the beautiful Cape Town beach, Dad disappears, and Mom takes Douglas and her maid, Hope, into"exile"in a tiny town in Karoo, where the landscape is largely dust and thorn. Douglas finds love with a classmate and a father in Moses, a Xhosa ex-miner, also in exile without an official pass. The newspaper headlines are about the distant Soweto riots, but the vicious racism is part of daily life even in the hinterland. The story is in the details in this first novel: the exquisite sense of place, the tender intimacy, and the casual cruelty, from murder to being forced to use separate utensils. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
"