Written over a span of almost sixty years, these four novels are all early works, mostly debuts. In the years that followed their publication, their authors have all gone on to win awards and garner much critical acclaim. While their protagonists are both male and female, come from different backgrounds: Afrikaans, Jewish, English, come from different parts of the country, urban and rural, and have different life experiences on the road to self–discovery, all four books share a common background, South Africa during the apartheid years.
The Lying Days. Nadine Gordimer. 1953
The author and political activist, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, reveals the different layers of life in South Africa in the earlier years of apartheid, as she tells the story of a young woman's emotional and intellectual journey into womanhood. This, her first novel, is semi–autobiographical, and Gordimer documents the narrow–mindedness of small town life, and the racialism that permeates it. Helen Shaw is a seventeen–year–old at the beginning of the story, the daughter of a conventional middle–class family living in an all–white suburban community near a gold mine. A love affair with the free–thinking Ludi, and encounters with people outside of her usual sphere, bring her to political awareness, and give her the strength to defy her parents.
(see also Michelle Bailat-Jones' detailed review at suite101.com).
Home Ground. Lynn Freed. 1986
Lynn Freed's second novel is set in the city of Durban 1953, where her heroine has to come to terms with two realities: being Jewish in a predominantly gentile society, and being white in an overwhelmingly black country. Against this background, Ruth Frank deals with her budding sexuality, her growing awareness of racial discordance in a society in flux, and her desire to be free of her prosperous, flamboyant, noisy family, theatre people, and her domineering mother. But independence, hers and that of her sisters, does not bring the dreamed–of happiness, and leaving the country becomes an option.
The Smell of Apples. Mark Behr. 1993
Mark Behr's protagonist is an Afrikaans boy, like the author who was brought up as an Afrikaner. Set in Cape Town in the 1970s, Behr's first novel presents a picture of apartheid seen through a child's eyes, and the child's eventual loss of innocence. A confused young eleven–or–twelve–year–old has to comes to grips with his father's cruel and perverted behavior, the conflicts within his family, and, in the process of his personal journey, he has to deal with the deeply ingrained racial attitudes indoctrinated into his generation. As politcal events affect his perception, the facade of his life begins to crumble.
The Children's Day. Michiel Heyns. 2009
This debut novel, set in a small town in the 1960s, is the story of both a sexual and a political awakening. Michiel Heyns' character, Simon, the son of an English father and an Afrikaans mother, has to deal with the angst and dilemmas his mixed parentage creates in a South Africa where conflict exists between the so–called English elite, and the despised Afrikaners. At boarding school, he begins to establish his own sense of self and shed his racial conservatism.
These four novels come together as a small group because of their commonality. In its canon of fiction, other South African stories are being told, particularly encouraged by the diversity of the changing political and social climate.
Isme Bennie - Ismé Bennie, a well-known Canadian tv executive, is now a media management consultant and non-fiction writer.
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