White Boy Running

Description

In the run up to the 1987 election Christopher Hope returned to his native South Africa after a twelve-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.

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.

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 * The 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' *