5 LEISURE
OF THE
BEST
HOLIDAY READS
A selection of local fiction, memoirs and history for your vacation reading list.
TRAVEL LIGHT, MOVE FAST BY ALEXANDRA FULLER
BORDERLINE BY MARITA VAN DER VYVER
After her father’s sudden death, bestselling author Alexandra
A letter among her deceased ex-husband’s
Fuller realises that if she is going
belongings rips open Theresa’s world. For years she
to weather his loss, she will need
has turned her back on Theo – a man who spent the
to become the parts of him she
last two decades of his life institutionalised – and on
misses most. So begins Travel
their shared past in a country where teenage boys
Light, Move Fast, the unforgettable
were conscripted to fight on ‘the Border’ in a war
story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled
that those back home knew little about. Least of all
black sheep who moved to
Theresa, who spent her days dreaming of discos and
Africa to fight in the Rhodesian
first kisses.
War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability,
Realising that the letter was written by a Cuban
1
soldier and addressed to his child – who, if still alive, would be at least forty years old – Theresa heads for
to revel in promise rather than
Cuba: to search for the soldier’s child, to deliver the
wallow in regret, and who
letter, to atone in some way for Theo’s deeds and for
was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting
her own ignorance.
lost – he taught his daughters to live as if everything
In sultry Cuba,
needed to happen altogether, all at once or not at all.
amid its picturesque
Now, in the wake of his death, Fuller internalises
1950s cars and the
his lessons with clear eyes, and celebrates a man who
fragrant smoke of
swallowed life whole. A master of time and memory,
its cigars, Theresa’s
Fuller moves seamlessly between the days and
search connects her
months following her father’s death as she and her
intimately with those
mother return to his farm with his ashes and contend
branded ‘the enemy’
with his overwhelming absence… and she remembers
during the war in
her childhood spent running after him in southern
Angola as she begins
and central Africa. Writing of the rollicking grand
to unravel what
misadventures of her mother and father, bursting
growing up in the
with pandemonium and tragedy, Fuller takes their
South Africa of that
insatiable appetite for life to heart. Here, in Fuller’s
time really meant.
Africa, is a story of joy, resilience and vitality, from one of our finest writers. 56
SILVER DIGEST // SUMMER 2019
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