A South African Boy who Lived Dangerously

📖 The Scoop

A South African Boy who lived Dangerously is a remarkable and true story.You are in a for a unique roller-coaster read filled with twists, turns, compassion and tragedy. Hilary has written an hilarious and often poignant account of growing up in Cape Town before migrating to Melbourne, a well-trodden path for many fellow South Africans who fled the suffocating indignities of Apartheid South Africa. A long list of books have recorded how South Africans resisted Apartheid. Hilary's book departs from this "rebels without a pause" perspective without diminishing it. In the first half of the book, he provides a colourful glimpse of how so many South Africans, in this case the mixed-race community officially known as "coloureds" in South Africa, endured the inescapable humiliations of racial segregation with ribald inventiveness and brash fun in the suburbs of Cape Town and the various nooks and crannies of Apartheid society. In the second half of the book, the youthful rulebreaker takes a serious turn in his new home city, Melbourne, learning how to thrive in business in the welcoming ambience of Australia. "This is not a political book", Hilary writes. And fortunately so, because circumventing the well-chronicled history of oppression in South Africa opens up space for the author to plunge with gusto into the ups and downs of daily life, including the painful decisions that dogged life in a profoundly racist society. The great surprise is that several of the lessons he learned in his rebellious adolescence eventually served as pillars of his unexpected success as a businessman in Australia. The journey from Cape Town to Melbourne tells several different stories, all of which illuminate how ordinary South Africans simultaneously opposed Apartheid while still foriging lives and lifestyles that were filled with relationships, family, fun, and a sense of community. At the same time, the shadow of Apartheid was never far from all this.

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