Cruel Crazy Beautiful World

Two characters navigate the post-apartheid South African landscape in this haunting story of the injustice that still simmers below the country s surfaceIn Troy Blacklaws s ambitious novel, the lives of two African men run parallel, exposing the tensions that rumble at South Africa s post-apartheid core. Jerusalem is a young poet and student whose stubborn father will no longer pay for his rambling studies. Half Jewish, half Muslim, Jerusalem is forced from Cape Town to a distant harbor village by his father, who believes a stint selling curios to tourists will right his wandering ways. Meanwhile, Jabulani loses his teaching job in Zimbabwe after mocking President Mugabe and must move south to start a new life. But his life across the border is tainted by the harsh truth that racism isn t gone; it s just taken another form. As the two men s lives merge, their stories reveal the paradoxes of the South African experience.