The atmospheres of apartheid are rather like a fog in England: one minute you're driving through,
visibility nil, and with heart in mouth, and the next it suddenly clears for a few yards and you
nervously breathe again.
Noni Jabavu, the first Black South African woman to publish books of memoir, was also one of the first African women who pursued a literary career. At thirteen, Noni left South Africa to continue her schooling in England, returning only for short visits in the decades that followed. In 1977, she embarked on a biography of her late father, the illustrious politician, educationist and writer DDT Jabavu. To do her research, she had to return to South Africa.
A travelling Black woman of means, with a British passport and loved ones dotted across the globe, Noni was rudely confronted by the indiscriminate cruelty and indignity of apartheid.
In this time, she wrote a series of columns for the Daily Dispatch, sharing her often astonishing
daily experiences. These columns, compiled here for the first time, display her sharp intellect, her love for her family and her people as well as the intense alienation she often felt.
A Stranger at Home is both witty - and at times uproariously funny - and an intimate, deeply unsettling lens on the contradictions that come with being Black when 'whites hold all the aces'.
