At the height of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, a boy must face life decisions that test what he believes and call for no turning back.
South Africa, 1976. Joshua lives with his mother in the maid s room, in the backyard of their wealthy white employers house in the city by the sea. He doesn’t quite understand the events going on around him. But when he rescues a stranger and riots begin to sweep the country, Joshua has to face the world beneath the world deep inside him to make heartbreaking choices that will change his life forever.
Genuine and quietly unflinching, this beautifully nuanced novel from a veteran journalist captures a child’s-eye view of the struggle that shaped a nation and riveted the world.
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“Narrator Debi Hawkins grew up in Africa and still lives there, so it’s not surprising that she’s so fluent in portraying both the Xhosa-speaking young Joshua and his mother, as well as the Afrikaans language of white South Africans. She brings realism and character distinction to this story…Hawkins captures the haughty orders given by Afrikaner Mrs. Malherbes; the joviality of Joshua, which dims as he ages; the clicking warning used by Joshua’s mother in times of danger; and the urgent whispers of black revolutionaries and their white coconspirators…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
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