In this week’s edition of Bookstr’s Around the World series — grab your passports — we’re heading to South Africa, which is known for its natural beauty and incredible wildlife. From works of fiction to memoirs, strap in and get ready to learn more about the world.
John M. Coetzee
John M. Coetzee was born just north of Cape Town in 1940 and published his first book in his mid-thirties in 1974. During the time that he was writing, Coetzee was also a literature professor in Cape Town and the United States, teaching at well-known schools such as John Hopkins and Harvard Universities, respectively.
He won several awards for his fictional works, including Britain’s Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. His first fictionalized memoir, and perhaps his most famous work, Boyhood, tells the story of a young boy learning to embrace literature while living amidst apartheid in South Africa.
Trevor Noah
Born mixed-race in South Africa in 1984, Trevor Noah experienced the effects of apartheid firsthand. Forced to live with his mom so no one would know of his father, she would often have to hide Noah from the police to keep his existence a secret.
When he was 27, Noah moved to the United States and became The Tonight Show’s first South African comedian. In 2016, Noah wrote his memoir, Born a Crime, detailing his experiences growing up in South Africa.
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer was born in Gauteng, South Africa, in 1923. She mainly wrote short stories and novels and lectured in the United States throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.
In 1991, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her novel July’s People, a fictional tale about black South Africans who overthrow apartheid and a white South African family forced to flee to the village of their black servant, July. Gordimer died at age 90 in 2014.
Bessie Head
Despite being born in South Africa in 1937, Bessie Head is considered one of the most influential writers from Botswana. Her mother was white, and her father was black during the height of apartheid. At a young age, her mother was forced to go to multiple mental health institutions, and Head was placed with a mixed-race family in South Africa. In 1964, she moved with her young son to Botswana and became a citizen there 15 years later.
One of her most popular books, A Question of Power, is semi-autobiographic and follows Elizabeth, a woman struggling with hallucinations and violent nightmares. She ends up fleeing apartheid South Africa with her son to live in Botswana.
So, whether you are looking to diversify your TBR or to learn more about apartheid in South Africa, each of these authors has something to say if you are willing to listen.
For more global reads to add to your TBR, click here!
Interested in diversifying your reading with more stories featuring black voices? Click here!
