Kirjahaku

The classic story of life in Apartheid South Africa. Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university. This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do -- he escaped to tell about it.

Mark Mathabane first came to prominence with the publication of KAFFIR BOY (Touchstone 1998), which became a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller. MIRIAM'S SONG is the story of Mark's sister who remained in South Africa when his family moved to America. It is the gripping tale of a woman, representative of an entire nation, who came of age amid the violence and rebellion of the 1980s. She saw the destruction of the hated regime of apartheid and the birth of a new and Democratic South Africa. Mark writes in Miriam's voice, based on stories she told him, but he has recreated her unforgettable experience as only someone who has lived through it could. The immediacy of the hardships that brother and sister endured, from daily school beatings to near overwhelming poverty, is balanced by the beauty of their childhood observations and the true affection they had for each other. Miriam emerges as both an innocent child drawn into the war against apartheid and a strong woman forever changed by the struggles, brutality and politics of the world around her. Mark emerges once more as a writer of extraordinary ability, sensitivity and insight.