This Life

A Novel

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Pub Date 12 May 2015 | Archive Date 12 May 2015

Description

This beautifully written novel, by one of South Africa's most celebrated writers, has an almost hypnotic power that draws the reader into one woman's life. As a post-apartheid novel, This Life considers both the past and future of the Afrikaner people through four generations of one family. In an elegiac narrator's tone, there is also a sense of compulsion in the narrator's attempts to understand the past and achieve reconciliation in the present. This Life is a powerful story partly of suffering and partly of reflection.

This beautifully written novel, by one of South Africa's most celebrated writers, has an almost hypnotic power that draws the reader into one woman's life. As a post-apartheid novel, This Life...


Advance Praise

"Schoeman brings together the threads of mystery, loss, and progress in a haunting final scene. . . [S]ubtle and sometimes mysterious, arriving at its most powerful moments unpredictably and honestly." Kirkus Reviews

"​There is so much I love about this novel. Its rhythm is near tectonic. It's slow as hell and it makes no apologies about it. It's profoundly indifferent to its audience, but not in a way that manifests in grating overt cleverness or narrative tricks. This is the opposite of that. Schoeman's unnamed narrator has no idea what an audience even is. She only tells her story from her death bed because she wants to understand her life. . . By the end (thanks to a particular narrative turn), I was reminded of The Magic Mountain. Like Mann's great novel, This Life is a narrative in a kind of sanatorium. The dramas are small and specific to these people and this place, and it takes very little, ultimately, to expose the fragility of it all. Schoeman's narrator, however, unlike Hans Castorp, doesn't "come of age" in exchange for her time. She learns some, sure, but it comes much too late.​"​ -- Chad Felix, Bookseller at WORD Brooklyn

"Schoeman brings together the threads of mystery, loss, and progress in a haunting final scene. . . [S]ubtle and sometimes mysterious, arriving at its most powerful moments unpredictably and...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780914671152
PRICE $18.00 (USD)

Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

I received a copy of this from the publisher. This was a lovely, quiet book that reflects on life an memory. It is a slow moving book, but one well worth the read.

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Karel Schoeman is an acclaimed South African writer, and this excellent translation from the Afrikaans of his novel from the wonderful Archipelago Books is a real delight. Sussie, a now elderly woman, is bedridden and close to death. As she lies there she looks back over her life to remember and try to make sense of all that happened. It’s a lyrical, almost incantatory, book, an elegy for a life not lived, a life full of isolation, betrayal, loss and violence that Sussie mentally absented herself from in self-defence. Always on the outside looking in, not always understanding what is happening around her, hers is a sad and melancholy tale. I also enjoyed the descriptions of life in South Africa, particularly in the Karoo, from before the Boer War up to modern times. A haunting and atmospheric tale.

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