Adventures of an Expat in South Africa
If you’ve grown up in South Africa and gone to school there, my guess is you will know (and love) the Spud book series by John van de Ruit:
If you are not South African and new to the country, I highly recommend you get these books. If you aren’t much of a reader, opt for ...
"We Are Not Such Things" is the story of author Justine van der Leun’s quest to get to the bottom of what really happened the day Amy Biehl, an American student in South Africa, was killed by an angry mob in a township near Cape Town in 1993. Amy’s parents later publicly forgave the men convicted of her murder. The details of how it all unfolded are fascinating.
Many Americans don’t know Trevor Noah nearly as well as most South Africans, who over the years have seen him rise through the ranks of comedians to become a South African icon. No one does accents as well as Trevor Noah does, and no country like South Africa gives you so much good material ...
Tony Park is an Australian author who writes novels set in southern Africa, with a focus on South Africa. His books are sold around the world with two, Ivory and The Delta, so far available in the U.S. He recently launched his 13th novel, Red Earth, which is set in KwaZulu Natal. He is a fellow expat, spending six months of every year in Africa where he has a house near the Kruger Park.
You know the saying Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all?
Well, I think it might be the opposite in the case of domestic help. Losing your maid after returning to a land where live-in domestic help was last affordable in the 1950s is so painful, so utterly despair-inducing, that you ...
The following is as good a summary of what serial expats, and particularly their children, often feel like:
“That is the very nature of the expat’s life: It is divided, compartmentalized across geographic boundaries and into cultural and linguistic spheres. There is the crowd that you belong ...
I don’t think you can review Circling the Sun, a historical novel about Beryl Markham – pioneering woman bush pilot, horse trainer, adventurer, scorned lover, a woman much ahead of her time but also a complete product of her time and place – without also reviewing the memoir Beryl ...
When I wrote about the role of charity in Africa, I heavily relied on a treasure trove of quotes out of Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari. But I ...
Remember the faraway places you read about as a child, and the sense of wonder you felt at their mention?
One such place for me was Zanzibar. I’m not sure exactly where I got my information, but it might well have been a story from Arabian Nights. I’d lie in bed long after my mother ...
I have lately seen a lot of soul-searching within the expat community about the world “trailing spouse.” It’s slightly less loaded than “expat wife” – you know, the one in high heels, cocktail glass in freshly-manicured hands, hanging out poolside with other similarly ...