Books set in South Africa (104)


Find more books set in South Africa by genre:
81.

The Little Karoo by Pauline Smith EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
First published in 1925, Pauline Smith's beautiful collection of stories set in the South Africa of her childhood is a lyrical and moving look at growing up in a remote landscape. Smith captures life in the heart of the Little Karoo, a mostly uninhabited terrain, where rain may not fall for years at a time. Poor, white early-Afrikaner settlers beset by hard times and an unforgiving landscape, the characters in her stories overcome tragedy time and time again, refusing to be broken.

82.

The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Helen Shaw is the daughter of white middle-class parents in a gold-mining town in South Africa. As Helen comes of age, her awareness of the African life around her grows. Her involvement with young blacks leads her into complex relationships of emotion and action in a culture of dissension.


84.

The Night of the Burning by Linda Press Wulf EN

0 Ratings
Description:
The story begins in Poland in 1921, set in a little known period of history - the periods between the World Wars. It's the story of Devorah and her sister, who escape the Night of the Burning in their village during the Jewish pogroms, and their incredible journey to safety, led by philanthropist Isaac Ochberg. Based on a true story, it's a powerful and utterly compelling first-person account of the trauma experienced by a child, and her subsequent journey from despair through to hope.

85.

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay EN

Rating: 4 (7 votes)
Description:
“The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.” –The New York Times “Unabashedly uplifting . . . asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–‘the power of one’–can prevail.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives ... continue

86.

The Promise by Damon Galgut EN

Rating: 4 (10 votes)
Description:
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE On her deathbed, Rachel Swart makes a promise to Salome, the family's Black maid. This promise will divide the family--especially her children: Anton, the golden boy; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by feelings of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over thirty years, the dwindling Swart family remains haunted by the unmet promise, just as their country is haunted by its own failures. The Promise is an epic South African drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of history, sure... continue

87.

The Sabi by Diane Brown EN

0 Ratings
Description:
She does not know how, but has a sabi from her earliest memory that she was different. What she does know is that 'difference' had currency in the past, and it certainly still has currency today. The Sabi will have an effect on you - have no doubt about that. In her debut novel, Diane Brown takes a scenic and open-eyed walk down memory lane to the 1960's when apartheid was in full swing to the early 1990's when South Africa was beginning to sense freedom. She ventures further back in time to help solve the puzzle of the current time, how did South Africa become so angry and so violent? Writing... continue

88.

The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Vietnam flag Vietnam
Description:
Disaffected, bored with his career at the French Colonial Ministry (where he has copied out birth and death certificates for eight years), and disgusted by a mistress whose vapid optimism arouses his most violent misogyny, the narrator finds himself at the point of complete breakdown while vacationing in Florence. After leaving his mistress and the Ministry behind forever, he joins the crew of The Gibraltar, a yacht captained by Anna, a beautiful American in perpetual search of her sometime lover, a young man known only as the Sailor from Gibraltar.''

89.

The Smell of Apples : A Novel by Mark Behr EN

Rating: 4.5 (2 votes)
Country: Africa / Tanzania flag Tanzania
Description:
The story of an affluent white South African family during apartheid. Its narrator is the son of an Afrikaner general and he describes his growing disillusion with the cruelty and arrogance of the whites. Set in the 1970s, the novel follows him from boyhood to soldiering in Angola, fighting the blacks.