Every Secret Thing - Softcover

Slovo, Gillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844085996 ISBN 13: 9781844085996

Publisher: Little, Brown UK, 2009

Synopsis

A passionate witness to the colossal upheaval that has transformed her native South Africa, Gillian Slovo has written a memoir that is far more than a story of her own life. For she is the daughter of Joe Slovo and Ruth First, South Africa's pioneering anti-apartheid white activists, a daughter who always had to come second to political commitment. Whilst recalling the extraordinary events which surrounded her family's persecution and exile, and reconstructing the truth of her parents' relationship and her own turbulent childhood, Gillian Slovo has also created an astonishing portrait of a courageous, beautiful mother and a father of integrity and stoicism.

About this title

Review:

The author's parents, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, were South Africa's best-known white opponents of apartheid. First was assassinated in 1982; Slovo became housing minister in Nelson Mandela's multiracial government before dying of cancer. Reconstructing their lives--often in jail or in hiding--their daughter (born in 1952) writes with painful honesty of the war inside her between admiration for their convictions and desperate longing for the normalcy and security denied her as a child. There is no easy resolution here, but great love and sorrowful understanding.

About the Author:

Gillian Slovo recently adapted TIES OF BLOOD, a fictional work about South Africa, into a six part series for the BBC. Since Nelson Mandela's release she has made frequent visits to South Africa (she wrote a piece for the THE GUARDIAN on the run up to the election).

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown UK
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1844085996
• ISBN 13: 9781844085996
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384