White Boy Running

By Christopher Hope

In the run up to the 1987 election Christopher Hope returned to his native South Africa after a twelve-year absence. The nature of that year's whites-only election and the bitter defeat of the liberals led him to write this satirical, evocative portrait of what it looked and felt like growing up in a country gripped by an absurd, racist insanity.

Full of exquisite and despairing descriptions, Hope weaves together journalistic commentary and his own personal story as he encounters the bloody battles that have divided his homeland. This is a mordantly witty account of escape, displacement and disillusionment, and a modern classic of journalistic memoir.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Release date: May 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786496430

Christopher Hope

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1944 and moved to London in 1975. He is the author of twelve novels including Kruger’s Alp, winner of the Whitbread Novel Award, and the Booker short-listed Serenity House. Hope's non-fiction includes a highly praised volume of autobiography, White Boy Running (1988) and a travel book, Moscow! Moscow! (1990), which won a PEN Award.

Reviews for White Boy Running

[herschelian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christopher Hope is well-known as a novelist. In this book he returns to his native South Africa after 12 years abroad. To me it reads like the account of an inmate who has escaped revisiting the Mental Asylum. He uses his usual comic touch to assess the state of white South Africa (this is written in the late 1980s) and finds it so mad, so incredible that it is almost like reading a farce.

[cblaker_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christopher Hope grew up a member of a minority within a minority of South Africa. His family was white, but English and Catholic, rather the ruling Afrikaan and Dutch Reform group. The Afrikaans distrusted the English for being insufficiently tough on the black majority. The book begins with Hope ending his self-imposed exile. His first novel, Separate Development was banned by the Nationalist government. Hope returns to his homeland for the 1988 elections. This would be the last election the Nationalist party would win. The Nationalist party was responsible for the development and implementation of the apartheid system.Christopher Hope tells the story of South African's recent history through the story of his growing up. The Nationalists rise to power when Hope is about five or six. It bears repeating that the Nationalist did not take power in a putsch, but were elected (although of course the black majority did not yet have the franchise). For me at least, history told in this personal manner had much more impact than an traditional, impersonal history.I'd recommend this as an introduction to South Africa history.