| |
Books
:: Southern Cross ::
:: Reviews ::
The Good Book Guide:
'Turner writes with passion, eloquence, honesty - and from experience. She writes of her country with great clarity, love and awe. This is a novel told from the heart, which should be read by the widest audience.
:: Excerpt ::
Anna and Paul are bound by a love so deep it seems nothing can come between them. He is white, she is not. Its not only their ideals, but also their relationship that challenges apartheid divided South Africa. Working together in the underground resistance movement, their lives are fraught with excitement and danger, until the night when Paul and a friend are brutally murdered. Paralysed by grief, but sustained by the memory of Pauls love, Anna fights for justice and truth.
Ten Years later in the new South Africa, Anna brings the unsolved murder to the Truth Commission. There she encounters James Kay, a cynical determined journalist who has information which turns Annas life upside down. James reveals a darek truth that threatens to destroy the very foundations on which Anna has rebuilt her life.
James and Anna both discover that nothing is black and white. It never was. Its a thousand shades of grey. "How benign Johannesburg seemed at night. All the dirt and violence concealed by the glittering lights. Annas face shone as she looked around at the small gathering, at these friends who had become her family. She felt the hope pulsing through each of them and she saw it humming in Pauls eyes as he looked to the horizon, waiting for the appearance of the Southern Cross, for that magical moment when the first, tiny, dazzling diamonds of light would pop through the seemingly infinite velvet blue of the sky. There it is ! he cried. And there they were, the four stars that long ago had pointed the way south to the Europeans navigating their way across the seas in search of spices and the east."
"Southern Cross" is about all the difficult things I've been wading through in the past few years. Hopefully a murk that I have now moved out of! It's the story of Anna, a coloured activist from struggle years who now has a senior position in the civil service. And who is frozen by grief. Her activist lover Paul was assassinated ten years before we meet Anna as she prepares to take the story to the TRC. Then along comes James, cynical, living in the moment journalist who has stumbled on information that turns Anna's world upside down. Paul wasn't the man he seemed to be. In her search for the truth about Paul's murder she is forced to review of her entire narrative of their relationship and therefore her ownstory and sense of herself. It's about Anna's journey into the present. It's also about the greyness of things in South Africa now, as distinct from the clear black and whiteness of things in the 80's, the clear right and wrongness of things then. It's about grief and healing. And it's about the Truth Commission and all the themes that radiate out from that experience.
The idea for the book was planted during the two years I worked as a journalist on SABC TVs Truth Commission Special Report. It draws on my own experiences of investigating my fathers assassination. My dad, Rick Turner was an anti-apartheid activist who was shot dead at our house in Durban on January 8, 1978 by a still unknown assassin.
"Southern Cross" is the story of Anna, an activist from the struggle years who now has a senior position in the new South African civil service. And who is frozen by grief. Her comrade and lover, Paul, was assassinated ten years before. We meet Anna as she prepares to take the story to the TRC. Then along comes James, cynical, living in the moment journalist who has stumbled on information that turns Anna's world upside down. James evidence suggests that Paul wasn't the man he seemed to be.
In certain respects Southern Cross is about the Truth Commission and all the themes that radiate out from that experience. It's also about the greyness of things in South Africa now, as distinct from the clear black and whiteness of things in the 80's, the clear rightness and wrongness of things then. But first and foremost, for me, it is the story of Anna's journey out of the paralysing grief of her past and back into the present. |
|
