Eighteen contemporary short stories by South Africa’s best writers take the reader on a journey through the country’s literary landscape. Giants such as Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, and Alan Paton (whose Cry, the Beloved Country, excerpted in the book, was made into a major motion picture) are included alongside lesser-known but equally talented writers. These stories examine the unique landscape of a place that has emerged from tumultuous change to become one of the most popular travel destinations in Africa. The book, divided into three areas of South Africa—Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape—also takes readers into game parks, rural areas, and the peculiar mindset of a country divided against itself.

These stories not only traverse the geographic regions of South Africa but cross the boundaries of time, exploring perspectives of both the oppressed and the oppressors. Social and psychological boundaries are crossed as well. One story examines the racial partitioning of a beach, where a man longs for a certain woman on the wrong side of the strand and refuses to restrict himself—with disastrous consequences for both. Nadine Gordimer, for her part, guides us into a sort of inverted safari in which people migrate, hunt for food, and live in fear of being hunted themselves.

The stories in South Africa (some previously unpublished) are examples of the most imaginative and provocative South African writing. These literary gems will give readers a sense of the country—its landscapes, its history, its culture, and a window onto day-to-day life.

Whereabouts Press is an independent publisher of books that convey a sense of a place—a country, a region, a city—through stories. Unlike guidebooks written by professional travel writers, Travelers Literary Companions feature stories written by literary writers—all of whom are native to the places they write about. They didn’t write specifically for travelers. They wrote because they had good stories to tell. And their stories tell us not just about people, but about the soul of a place.