This Life
  • Published: 15 May 2015
  • ISBN: 9780914671152
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 210
  • RRP: $35.00

This Life

A Novel

Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

A moving story about a woman in her final days, reflecting on her life and the injustices she has witnessed.

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.
  • Published: 15 May 2015
  • ISBN: 9780914671152
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 210
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

Praise for This Life


  • "Schoeman's haunting, evocative prose manages to turn a fairly simple storyline into compelling reading." - Laura Chalar

  • "It is one of the most powerful and moving tales imaginable. [...] There is a strong meditative quality to the work, as well as a sombre lyricism, reflected in the cadence and rhythm which is more often seen in poetry than prose. I found it quite beautiful, and strongly recommend that it be read in either language." - Beverley Roos Muller

  • "One of those quietly powerful and beautifully written books that wrestles with all the great questions without ever slighting the ordinary men and women who ask them. A distinguished debut." - Kirkus Reviews on Another Country
  • "I suspect this novel is a masterpiece." - Alan Paton on Promised Land

    • penguin pop image
    penguin pop image