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

Author: Hope, Christopher (Author)

Society & culture: general

Published on 3 May 2018 by ATLANTIC BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 336 pages
166 x 240 x 33 | 684g

Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize,2019In White Boy Running, Christopher Hope explored how it felt and looked to grow up in a country gripped by an absurd, racist insanity. On a road trip thirty years later, Hope goes in search of todays South Africa; post the evils of 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: what 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.