White Boy Running

by Christopher Hope

Overview

In the run up to the 1987 election, Christopher Hope returned to his native South Africa after a 12-year absence. The nature of that year's whites-only election and the bitter defeat of the liberals led him to write this satirical, evocative portrait of what it looked and felt like growing up in a country gripped by an absurd, racist insanity. Full of exquisite and despairing descriptions, Hope weaves together journalistic commentary and his own personal story as he encounters the bloody battles that have divided his homeland. This is a mordantly witty account of escape, displacement, and disillusionment, and a modern classic of journalistic memoir.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786496423
Publisher:	Atlantic Books
Publication date:	05/03/2018
Edition description:	None
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christopher Hope is the author of Kruger's Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction; Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize; and My Mother's Lovers and Shooting Angels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Editorial Reviews

"Ventures deeper and deeper into the theatre of cruelty, enacting a tangled, horrifying dark comedy." —J.M. Coetzee


"Hope writes with extraordinary exuberance and invention." —Literary Review


"Marvellously chilling." —Times


"Mocking, angry and beautiful." —Washington Post


"Exactly the right note of cold, poetic irony." —Financial Times


"Breathtaking to the very end." —Guardian on My Mother's Lovers

From the Publisher

Poet-novelist Hope was born and raised in a South African Irish-Catholic family and hence, set apart from the ruling Afrikaners, has always been keenly aware of the pernicious effects of apartheid on both blacks and whites. ``In this sad, sensitive book, describing his first visit to South Africa in 13 years, he examines current conditions against the backdrop of his own memories,'' wrote PW. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

$17.95. per nar A combination of autobiography, travel account, political commentary, and history, this book relates novelist Hope's return to South Africa at the time of the 1987 election. In describing his life growing up in Balfour, Johannesburg, and Pretoria, Hope details the frighteningly logical progression from the 1948 election when the Nationalists came to power to the absurdity and tragedy of 1987. The last of the three sections, ``Good Morning, Lemmings!'' describes the parties in the white election and the election itself. Of interest mostly to those with some knowledge of South Africa. Not a first choice or for the smaller library, but useful if bought along with the growing body of autobiographical material available on black South Africans. Maidel Cason, Univ. of Delaware Lib., Newark

Library Journal