Empire Settings
Published by Chicago Review Press
An expatriate South African goes home to find the black woman he loved and left behind in this “engaging . . . Poignant [and] altogether promising debut” (Publishers Weekly).
Danny Divin is a young white man in South Africa who enters into an illicit romance with a mixed race schoolgirl, the daughter of a black domestic servant. When social constraints force Danny to end the romance, he travels to America with the hope of starting a new life. There he meets Tesseba, a curious and trusting artist who takes him in and marries him to save him from deportation. The two build a life together, but Danny continues to be plagued by a growing sense of loss. Twenty years later, Danny returns to a “new” South Africa in the hope of saving a family fortune and finding the girl he has never forgotten.
“Unexpected, even unforgettable . . . [An] artful battle against cultural and historical amnesia.”
—The Washington Post
“Schmahmann is adept at blending the personal and the political, and his story manages memorably to evoke his country’s terrible past even as it portrays the tragic difficulties of its present struggles.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Teaches us volumes about hello and goodbye, holding on and letting go.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“All of Schmahmann’s characters . . . long for a past that can no longer exist—a longing [he] elucidates with bittersweet grace.” —The Baltimore Sun
“A South African Gone with the Wind.” —Library Journal
“Brings characters, family tensions and racial complexities alive in just a line or two.” —Seattle Times
“It bristles with tension and suspense and is remarkably authentic.” —Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus, Nobel Laureate
Danny Divin is a young white man in South Africa who enters into an illicit romance with a mixed race schoolgirl, the daughter of a black domestic servant. When social constraints force Danny to end the romance, he travels to America with the hope of starting a new life. There he meets Tesseba, a curious and trusting artist who takes him in and marries him to save him from deportation. The two build a life together, but Danny continues to be plagued by a growing sense of loss. Twenty years later, Danny returns to a “new” South Africa in the hope of saving a family fortune and finding the girl he has never forgotten.
“Unexpected, even unforgettable . . . [An] artful battle against cultural and historical amnesia.”
—The Washington Post
“Schmahmann is adept at blending the personal and the political, and his story manages memorably to evoke his country’s terrible past even as it portrays the tragic difficulties of its present struggles.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Teaches us volumes about hello and goodbye, holding on and letting go.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“All of Schmahmann’s characters . . . long for a past that can no longer exist—a longing [he] elucidates with bittersweet grace.” —The Baltimore Sun
“A South African Gone with the Wind.” —Library Journal
“Brings characters, family tensions and racial complexities alive in just a line or two.” —Seattle Times
“It bristles with tension and suspense and is remarkably authentic.” —Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus, Nobel Laureate
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