There Goes English Teacher

Karin Cronje

A powerful memoir that is searingly honest, heart-achingly funny and deeply sad. There goes English Teacher spans three years of adventures and misadventures as an English teacher in a small Korean village and later at a university. This is an unusually honest memoir with strong reflective passages on, amongst other themes, the nature of identity and the loss of it; sexuality; belief; ageing; displacement; and nationhood.

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DATE

2018

GENRE

Memoir
i

PAGES

293

ISBN

978-1-928215-61-5

There Goes English Teacher

On a ‘considered’ whim writer Karin Cronje packs up her life and flies across the world to teach English in a small Korean village. The result is a poignant, heart-achingly funny, scandalous, and deeply moving account of incomprehension, awe, dislocation, belonging, the sticky business of identity and the loss of it, sanity, and the loss of that.

Characters like Dae-ho, her guru man, who reminds her to breathe; dazzling Mae and her bar, Goldfinger; Leona with her rattle snake tongue, and all the others she can’t understand are now the people in her life.

Back home is her son who has fallen in with a suspect character and her friends who now seem like dung beetles each rolling their own ball of muck. They, together with the tip of the African continent, are about to disappear into the sea.

She has only herself. And that sure as hell feels inadequate.

With her inimitable voice Karin Cronje shocks and delights as she digs deeply into the full catastrophe of being human.

Karin Cronje

Karin Cronje is the author of two novels, Vir ’n pers huis (1998) and Alles mooi weer (2008), for which she won the Jan Rabie/Rapport Prize. She is a part-time lecturer in the Music Literacy Department at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Karin Cronje's author page
Praise

“For years the story of teaching English in Korea was begging to be told. We are fortunate that it is now being told by a voice as skilled, funny and self-ironic as Karin Cronje.”
– Antjie Krog

“An extraordinary literary accomplishment.”
– Donve Lee

“Die vertellings is eerlik, snaaks en ook gevul met ‘n diep hartseer. Karin deel tong-in-die-kies haar persoonlike belewenisse gedurende dié soms uitdagende periode. Die botsing van twee kukture en die omarming en ontdekking van die onbekende word pragtig verwoord.”
– Christine Ferreira, Lééf – met hart & siel

“A book that hits home because of the author’s sincere voice and its many intriguing levels.”
– Michelle Dennis, Highway Mail, Northglen News and Berea Mail.

“Unusual and compelling.”
– Suzy Brokensha, FairLady

“There Goes English Teacher is a raw portret of creativity, identity and erosion, a report fromway beyond the trenches … Writers such as Ingrid Winterbach and J. M. Coetzee also articulate disintegration, fragmentation and distortion, but no one does it as howlingly raw as Cronje does … is a wonderful, abounding book, by one of a writer who portrays the chaos and unbearableness of this life alarmingly.”
– Deborah Steinmair in Rapport 25 November 2018

“A masterful work which fearlessly shines a light into the darkness of identity, sexuality, ageing and angst.”
– Brian Joss, The Gremlin

“Part stream of consciousness, part journal, you want to laugh, cry, seethe and scream with [Karin]… This is one roller coaster book – described on the (very lively and appealing) cover as ‘the full catastrophe of being a human’.”
– Nancy Richards

“With nuanced grace and considerable humour, Cronje makes of this episode in her life an enjoyable and enlightening yarn.”
– Mail and Guardian Festive Reads

“A candid look at the reality of life.”
-Robyn Spacey, thebookclubblog.co.za

“The author shocks, and delights by turns as she digs into the full catastrophe of being human.”
– sandtonchronicle.co.za

“A fun, lively memoir of a plucky woman, and of an experience that turned her inside out.”
– Arja Salafranca

“Highly readable and brave.”
– Vivien Horler, Cape Argus

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