They came from the stetl to a new land, to a new life. Another year in Africa, they said, another year in exile. Old bonds break as they adjust from the old world of pogroms to their new life in Africa. Six-year-old Ruth is haunted by memories of tragedy and persecution that are not even hers. Award-winning author, Rose Zwi, evokes with tenderness the 1930s and 40s with a tale of loss of...

Set against the escalating violence of the last years of the Apartheid regime, Safe Houses tells the story of three families – the Sibiyas, the Singers, the Sterns – who are inextricably bound by love and hate, hope and betrayal. Ruth and Lola are drawn into the struggle against Apartheid, but feel marginal: it is difficult to find solutions when one is part of the problem. Can love and hope...

Rose Zwi’s stories embrace people from different countries and cultures drawn together by a common humanity. Her characters range from a political activist who is house-arrested, to the child of immigrant parents caught between two cultures; from a city-educated woman returning to the arid homeland of her tribal grandfather, to a Rabbi and his wife in an East European shtetl; from a solitary...