Playing in the Light cover art

Playing in the Light

A Novel

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Playing in the Light

By: Zoë Wicomb
Narrated by: Cheryl Pitout
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About this listen

By the Windham Campbell Prize winner.

Set in a beautifully rendered 1990s Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb’s celebrated novel revolves around Marion Campbell, who runs a travel agency but hates traveling, and who, in post-apartheid society, must negotiate the complexities of a knotty relationship with Brenda, her first black employee. As Alison McCulloch noted in the New York Times, "Wicomb deftly explores the ghastly soup of racism in all its unglory denial, tradition, habit, stupidity, fear and manages to do so without moralizing or becoming formulaic." Caught in the narrow world of private interests and self-advancement, Marion eschews national politics until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission throws up information that brings into question not only her family’s past but her identity and her rightful place in contemporary South African society. "Stylistically nuanced and psychologically astute" (Kirkus), Playing in the Light is as powerful in its depiction of Marion's personal journey as it is in its depiction of South Africa's bizarre, brutal history.

©2006 Zoë Wicomb (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Africa
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