Safe HousesROSE ZWI
|
 Cover design by Lin Tobias Permission to use images and text should be directed to Spinifex Press |
Safe HousesROSE ZWI
|
Cover design by Lin Tobias Permission to use images and text should be directed to Spinifex Press |
WINNER 1994 Human Rights Award for Fiction
1993 Top Twenty Title Listener Women's Book Festival
The story of a unique friendship that develops against all the odds and reveals the complexities of apartheid and racial discrimination.
Against the background of the escalating violence of the 1980s, Safe Houses tells a story of three families - black and Jewish - who are inextricably bound by love and hate, hope and betrayal. Linked by a common past, separated by betrayal, Ruth and Lola are drawn into the struggle against apartheid, but feel inadequate and marginal: it is difficult to find solutions when one is part of the problem. Can the love and hope of their children, who meet and fall in love, survive an evil political system that indiscriminately devours both the guilty and the innocent?
In speaking of her work, Rose Zwi says "If you grow up under the shadow of the Holocaust [most of her father's family were massacred in Lithuania,] you are automatically concerned with things like human rights and if you are a writer, you feel the need to bear witness and to remind."
Zwi has set out to capture the full sweep of events during this difficult period and her novel is a remarkable achievement. In the space of only 200 pages she not only analyses a complex political situation in some depth but also conveys the human dimensions of the tragedy.
- Leon Trainor, Australian
Other Spinifex titles by Rose Zwi are:
Another Year in Africa
Speak the Truth, Laughing
Territory:World
All rights:Spinifex Press
Talking book: Louis Braille Books
