Back to Villa Park

By Jenny Robson

The story takes place on the day of Dirk’s eighteenth birthday, when he has applied for a position in a youth training programme at Kagiso Holdings. At seventeen, and without finishing school, he had hitchhiked back to Johannesburg, where he lived with his parents until he was twelve years old. Now, back in Villa Park, his old Johannesburg neighbourhood, Dirk lives in the maid’s quarters of the house in Groenewald Street where he lived as a boy.

At the Kagiso Holdings interview Dirk finds he is unable to answer the questions in the test he is given, and copies from the girl in front of him. When he is discovered, he is kicked out of the interview. His day goes from bad to worse – and as the story unfolds, the reader learns of Dirk’s life up to now; why he was living with his sister for the last five years, and why he has come back to Joburg. Dirk eventually learns that while life can be “unfair”, we all have the power to treat fairly the people we encounter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Jun 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780624058809

Jenny Robson

Jenny Robson was born in Cape Town. After studying Primary School Teaching in Mowbray and obtaining a degree in Philosophy through the University of South Africa, she worked as a teacher in Simonstown before going to Botswana, where she worked as a music teacher in Orapa for many years. She currently teaches at an International School in the town of Maun, on the banks of the Okavango. She did not start writing until the age of 38. To date she has published more than thirty books for children and young adults*, as well as a novel for adults and numerous short stories. Her texts depict South African teenagers with their dreams, their fears, their hopes and their problems, which resemble those experienced by young people outside the African continent. For this reason her books have been published in the Netherlands, South Korea, Ireland and Germany, where she was nominated for the prestigious Jugendliterturpreis in 2013.