Choke Chain by Jason Donald has a long emotional reach. Set in 1980’s apartheid South Africa it narrates the Thorne’s dysfunctional family life with clarity and compassion. Domesticity, gender politics and inequality are explored kitchen-sink style in this simmering story where two brothers, Alex, aged twelve, and Kevin, eight, grow up in poverty with an
Elani has grown up in violence. It surrounds her. It inhabits her father and lives on every face in her neighborhood. But Elani has learned a trick: watching people’s hands. If she carefully observes how someone carries a mug or a phone or a bottle, she can spot that subtle difference between holding and wielding.
Dalila by Jason Donald is a very relevant novel. It follows the eponymous lead in her journey as an asylum seeker from Kenya to the United Kingdom. Each stage of a refugee’s journey is covered, from the initial flight from horror to the cold and brutal bureaucracy of the asylum process. During the wearying process
