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Sense of Place Stars: South Africa

Fiction and Nonfiction Titles

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Fiction

• Bitter Fruit
  Author: Dangor, Achmat
  Publisher: Grove $ 13 (paper) ISBN: 0802170064 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  With the publication of Kafka's Curse, Achmat Dangor established himself as an utterly singular voice in South African fiction. His new novel, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award, is a clear-eyed, witty, yet deeply serious look at South Africa's political history and its damaging legacy in the lives of those who live there. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 2.15.05
• The Quarry
  Author: Galgut, Damon
  Publisher: Grove $ 13 (paper) ISBN: 0802141617 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  The Quarry, written ten years ago but never published outside of South Africa, is a stark, intense, and crystalline novel in which human nature betrays itself against the desolate backdrop of rural South Africa.
  Updated 10.08.04
• Get a Life
  Author: Gordimer, Nadine
  Publisher: FSG $ 20 ISBN: 0374161704 Date: 2005
  KirkusPW
  After being treated for thyroid cancer, South African ecologist Paul Bannerman finds that he is temporarily radioactive and retreats to his childhood home to protect his wife and child--and to rethink his life--in this tale from the 1991 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
  Updated 10.12.05
• The Whale Caller
  Author: Mda, Zakes
  Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374287856 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  A romantic comedy of sorts--in which the changing face of post-apartheid South Africa is revealed through prodigious, lyrical storytelling--this novel follows two misfits who fall in love in a country where just living from one day to the next can be challenge enough.
  Updated 9.26.05
• Heart of the Hunter
  Author: Meyer, Deon
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316935492 Date: 2004
  LJKirkusBooklist
  In his stunning American debut, the South African thriller writer delivers the story of a kidnapping and of a man refusing to reclaim the ruthless methods he mastered in the darkest days of South Africa's battle for survival.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Thrillers
  Updated 7.6.04
• Dead at Daybreak
  Author: Meyer, Deon
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316000124 Date: 2005
  LJBooklistPW
  The newest headspinning thriller from the breakout South African crime writer, author of Heart of the Hunter, is the story of an ex-cop who has seven days to solve a seemingly unsolvable crime--the answer to which lies in his own dark past.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Thrillers
  Updated 7.11.05

Nonfiction

• We Are All the Same: The Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love
  Author: Wooten, Jim
  Publisher: Penguin $ 19.95 ISBN: 1594200289 Date: 2004
  PWKirkus
  We Are All the Same is a powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit, even as it bears witness to the scope of the tragedy that is unfolding in Africa and around the world, cutting down millions of children like Nkosi Johnson.
  Updated 9.6.04