South Africa

This work features eighteen contemporary short stories by South Africa's best writers that take the reader on a journey through South Africa's literary landscape, exploring Africa's most popular travel destination as no travel guide can. Literary giants such as Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, and Alan Paton (whose "Cry Beloved Country", excerpted in the book, was made into a major motion picture) are amongst the talented writers who examine the unique landscape of a country that has emerged from tumultuous change to become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Africa for English-speaking travellers. The book, divided into three areas of South Africa - Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape - also includes game parks, farms, and even mines.These stories not only traverse the geographic regions of South Africa, but cross the boundaries of time to take the reader to a recent, but altogether different South Africa, reflecting perspectives of both the oppressed and the oppressors. Social and psychological boundaries are crossed as well. One story examines the partition of a beach into a whites-only area. Another one portrays a man who longs for a certain woman on the wrong side of the strand and refuses to restrict himself. Nadine Gordimer guides us into a sort of inverted safari in which the people migrate, hunt for food, and live in fear of being hunted themselves. These literary gems will give readers a sense of the country - its landscapes, its history, its culture, and a window onto day-to-day life.