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Karoo Boy

Karoo Boy

Author(s): Troy Blacklaws

Location(s): South Africa

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1970s

Location

Content

After a freak accident, Douglas’s twin brother is dead, and his family’s fragmentation begins. His mother packs up their home in Cape Town and takes him to a tiny backwater town in the semi-desert Karoo region, where she withdraws into her painting. Douglas, a city kid in an insular community, makes only two friends: a beautiful girl named Marika, with her adventurous spirit and tyrannical father: and an old garage worker named Moses, with his junkyard Volvo and dreams of driving away to Cape Town.

Against the backdrop of the bitter conflict of 1970s South Africa, Douglas develops a clearer insight into himself and his place in the world, a world where dreams and reality meet in a surprising twist. Blazing with color and light, Karoo Boy offers a sensuous and lyrical evocation of South Africa that leaves a lasting impression and ultimately ends on a note of hope.

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Book Reviews

Lead Review

Readers familiar with South African idiom will feel right at home in this first-person, present-tense story of a white boy’s coming-of-age at the height of apartheid in the 1970s. Booklist

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