The Cafe de Move-on Blues: In Search of the New South Africa

· Atlantic Books
Ebook
336
Pages
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize,2019
'Hope writes with extraordinary exuberance and invention.' - Literary Review
In White Boy Running, Christopher Hope explored how it felt and looked to grow up in a country gripped by an 'absurd, racist insanity'.
In The Cafe de Move-on Blues, on a road trip thirty years later, Christopher goes in search of today's South Africa; post-apartheid, but also post the dashed hopes and dreams of Mandela, of a future when race and colour would not count.
He finds a country still in the grip of a ruling party intent only on caring for itself, to the exclusion of all others; a country where racial divides are deeper than ever. As the old imperial idols of Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger are literally pulled from their pedestals in a mass yearning to destroy the past, Hope ponders the question:
W hat next?

Framed as a travelogue, this is a darkly comic, powerful and moving portrait of South Africa - an elegy to a living nation, which is still mad and absurd.

About the author

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of Kruger's Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, as well as My Mother's Lovers and Shooting Angels, which were both published to great acclaim. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.