A Quilt Of Dreams - Softcover

Schonstein, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552773220 ISBN 13: 9780552773225

Publisher: Black Swan, 2007

Synopsis

Set in Grahamstown, South Africa, during the 1990s at the height of political unrest and opposition to apartheid, this is the bittersweet story of two people whose lives intertwine without them knowing each other—one a heavy-drinking white man and the other the young daughter of a black activist.

Reuben Cohen van Tonder's battle with unresolved grief and his search for hidden peace and Vita Mbuli's innocent resolve to remove the bad luck that has troubled her family for generations climax together in a wondrous resolution of personal and national triumph.

In this captivating and heartfelt novel, Patricia Schonstein captures the harsh and brutal realities of South Africa's past with its raw and sore racism, interlacing them with enchantment, tenderness, forgiveness . . . and hope.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Schonstein is the author of the novels The Apothecary's Daughter and Skyline, which won the Percy FitzPatrick Prize in 2002 and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Schonstein now lives in South Africa.

From Publishers Weekly

In her second novel, Schonstein offers a compelling tale of hardship and isolation, chronicling the life of Rueben "Baby" Cohen van Tonder, a Jewish boy raised in a Catholic orphanage in South Africa. Persecuted as an adult for his Judaism, Rueben struggles to stay afloat, toiling tirelessly in a black-township trading store and grappling with alcoholism, an unhappy marriage, and haunting memories of his mother, who died when he was child. The setting is grim, but Schonstein compellingly interweaves disparate chapters of history-from Kristallnacht in 1938 to the Soweto uprising of 1976 and South African black militancy of the 1980s-providing a rich context for an extensive web of characters whose tales of suffering and loss mirror Rueben's own. The guilt of genocide survival, the scourge of addiction, and the impossibility of true acclimation into a society of others-these are of-the-moment issues, and Schonstein tackles them capably.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0552773220
• ISBN 13: 9780552773225
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368