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You Will Be Safe Here

You Will Be Safe Here

by Damian Barr (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2019

    $3.25
Synopsis

The stunning and shocking debut novel from the award-winning author of Maggie & Me. Set in South Africa You Will Be Safe Here explores legacies of abuse, redemption and the strength of the human spirit South Africa, 1901, the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe. Johannesburg, 2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he's not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they `make men out of boys'. Guaranteed. You Will Be Safe Here is a deeply moving novel of connected parts. Inspired by real events, it uncovers a hidden colonial history and present-day darkness while exploring our capacity for cruelty and kindness.

$3.25

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Quantity

4 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 352
 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 04 Apr 2019
ISBN 10: 1408886081
ISBN 13: 9781408886083
Book Overview: The stunning and shocking debut novel from the award-winning author of Maggie & Me. Set in South Africa You Will Be Safe Here explores legacies of abuse, redemption and the strength of the human spirit

Media Reviews
This would be an achievement for a third or fourth novel; for a first, it's an astonishing one. Barr's handling of his bravely chosen material - the conjoined shames of British and Afrikaaner history - is deft and the results will haunt you -- Patrick Gale, author of 'Take Nothing With You'
Devastating and formally ingenious, it traces the paths by which historical grief engenders present violence ... A vitally brave and luminously compassionate book -- Garth Greenwell, author of 'What Belongs to You'
Damian Barr has written a novel concerned with single strain of human history, of how a people are made and unmade and how they go on to make and unmake others, of the stories they tell themselves to allow such things to pass. In so doing he has captured the threads of all of human history. You Will Be Safe Here is as unexpected as it is unsettling, both in the telling and in the way that telling works to reveal hidden trails through the points of light and darkness, such that the reader arrives at the end to stand before a view over one hundred years in the making and says, I see it now -- Aminatta Forna
Sweeping yet intimate, heart-breaking yet often very funny ... This book confirms Barr as one of our most brilliant and big-hearted writers -- Alex Preston
Few writers can wind you with a word. But Damian Barr doesn't just do that, he tickles and then floors you, delights only to devastate, within a single phrase * Patrick Strudwick *
It's rare for a novel to go so deep that you come out of reading it a different person from when you went in. Damian Barr's investigation of a part of South Africa's history the British have been trying to forget for many many years is such a book. It was a very brave book to write, and parts of it call for some courage to read, but nothing more unusual and impressive has appeared for years -- Diana Athill
Damian Barr splits open lost history, sunlit moments of love and all private grief with this novel, a chisel at one end and a telescope at the other. Insightful and compassionate, open-hearted and unblinking, Barr gives us three unforgettable stories in this powerful, groundbreaking book -- Amy Bloom
Funny, tender, and heartbreaking ... A gifted storyteller * Independent on Sunday *
Barr's writing has a lightness of touch and warm humour which makes it easy to root for him ... His life has become a triumph * Observer *
Barr has a keen eye for wincingly evocative detail ... Lyrical * New Statesman *
Author Bio
Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about coming of age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, and won the Paddy Power Political Books 'Satire' Award and Stonewall Writer of the Year Award. Damian writes columns for the Big Issue and High Life and often appears on BBC Radio 4. He is creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. You Will Be Safe Here is his debut novel. Damian Barr lives in Brighton. @Damian_Barr