 Recent tsunamis have brought human disaster to a scale no one could ever have imagined. On a much smaller scale, yet just as devastating for the people involved, when the Umhlatuzana River broke its banks in 1987, more than 300 people drowned. Houses disappeared, telephone lines, bridges, and railway lines were swept away and roads caved in with people standing on them.In A RED KITE IN A PALE SKY, Lawrence is plucked from the raging river by helicopter. His home has been swept away and his mother, baby sister, brother and twin sisters have disappeared. Where will he go? And how will he start searching for his family? Guided by a picture in the newspaper, he sets out to find his mother and discovers another sort of order very different to what he has known.
‘And then I saw it. Lying there in the mud. Not a piece of paper, but a piece of glass. Not a message from Ma but one from Horace. I snatched it up and rubbed away the mud with my sleeve. What did it say? What was its message… this little round disc that came from Horace’s glasses? I held it up to my eye and the world looked stranger than before.’
Review: ‘A catch in the throat, a gasp on the lips… this is the effect this novel has on the reader’ The Pretoria News
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Published by Tafelberg, South Africa – in it’s 15th impression, this book is used extensively in schools.Winner of the SANLAM GOLD AWARD for youth literature 1990 |
