This Place I Call Home
Meg Vandermerwe
Ten stories. Ten voices. Ten diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans during our country’s challenging history.
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This Place I Call Home
In this thought-provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others. From an old widower who seems content but feels that his world is unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled racial persecution in 1930s Europe and now finds himself on a barren sheep farm in the Karoo, to a Polokwane teacher confronted with the moral dilemma of xenophobia, This Place I Call Home, leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities. Even though these powerful stories are characterised by hardship and loss, one cannot help but emerge inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit and the resilience of South Africa’s people.
Meg Vandermerwe was born in South Africa in 1978. She read English at Oxford University and is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She teaches UWC and lives in Cape Town.
“These brave imaginings take us into the heart-places of South Africans. Through Vandermerwe’s fine writing we are enabled to talk about home, come home and perhaps feel at home with(in) one another.”
“This slim collection of stories packs a punch well above its weight. Humane, compassionate and uncompromising, glinting with spirit and beauty, and written with a rare combination of discipline and vivacity, it marks the debut of a gifted writer.”
“It is rare when a writer accurately captures the hopes and anxieties of an entire nation but everything is here in This Place I Call Home … Besides her obvious versatility as a writer, Vandermerwe’s prose is deeply felt, compassionate and sincere.”