The Beneficiaries - Softcover

Sarah Penny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 190885393X ISBN 13: 9781908853936

Publisher: Valley Press, 2019

Synopsis

It is 1998. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is trying to make sense of over 30 years of human rights violations. In London, Lally, a white South African émigré, goes to dinner with Pim, a long-forgotten childhood friend, and his English family.

For Lally, adult existence has from choice remained transient, uprooted: a life of little consequence estranged from its own origins. But it is becoming clear that history will reach out, even to the inconsequential, and for Lally to seek out the truths of the child she must breach the hermetic safety of adult refuge.

Moving between contemporary London and the rural South Africa of 20 years earlier, The Beneficiaries traces both the young woman s search for knowledge and self in a society that disallows individuality and the older woman's journey beyond apathy and disillusionment towards the renewal of vitality and hope.

Exploring the shifting relationship between memory, forgetting and denial, South African author Sarah Penny explores the many versions of the truth that can ultimately lead to healing.

About this title

About the Author:

Sarah Penny was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1970. She studied at the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University and St Andrews University, Scotland. She emigrated to the UK in 2003, and has lectured in English and Creative Writing at Brunel University ever since. Her first novel, The Beneficiaries, was originally published in 2002 by Penguin South Africa, and was the runner-up for the Sunday Times Fiction Award. Set during the 1998 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the novel explores a young woman s attempt to come to terms with her traumatic past. A second novel, The Lies We Shared, published in 2011, moves between Kenya, Zimbabwe and London, tracing a daughter's attempt to discover her family's secrets in the wake of her mother's recent death. Sarah is married to historian John Dickie and has three young children. She lives in North London but retains an abiding interest in African history, culture and languages, particularly within Southern and East Africa. Another lifelong fascination is African wildlife, animal behaviour and nature conservation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Valley Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 190885393X
• ISBN 13: 9781908853936
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 256