Book description
“You are too close to the water,” Paul whispered. “There are barbels in the mud. They will wake up if you step on them.”
When Paul and Dominique are sent to boarding schools in Natal, their idyllic childhood on a Free State farm is over. Their parents’ leftist politics has…
Why read it?
1 author picked False River as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This is at heart a coming-of-age novel, unshrinkingly autobiographical in its depiction of what is clearly the author’s own family and background: the privileged upbringing on a prosperous farm in the centre of South Africa, the elite schools she and her beloved brother, Paul, attend, the tensions between her stern father and the rebellious brother. All recounted in a deadpan faux-naïve voice, which is often hilarious but also needle-sharp in its puncturing of the posturings and pretensions of upper-middle-class white South Africans. But at the centre of the largely satirical account is the tragic story of the decline and fall…
From Michiel's list on The best African books that don’t have much to say about Africa.
If you love False River...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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