Moving novel set in South Africa – You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr
You Will Be Safe Here in South Africa
Moving novel set in South Africa – We Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr – Prepare yourself for this novel. You’re going to learn so much, realise so much and then need time to sit and think about it whilst you pull yourself together. It’s a story to shock you but to explain the world to you as well. Honestly, it’s best not to go into this novel knowing too much. Get the full experience and let this novel affect you as it did me…
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Setting: South Africa as a young boy
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Moving novel set in South Africa – We Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr
I don’t think I have felt so humbled, embarrassed, horrified and speechless plus a whole other range of emotions at the same time.
This is a debut novel and the author’s passion, determination to have this story told, give the victims their voices. During the second Boer war in 1900, the British army set up concentration camps in South Africa. People were brought here taken from their farms and homes by force. Husbands are away fighting so many of those in the camp are women and children. I could smell the heat on the tarpaulin, hear the screams from the camp and I could almost see the fear on the faces of those trapped here. Chapters set here felt raw, visceral midst the struggle for survival.
Fast forward to 1947 and more recent times of course, yet the scenes of tragedy are still there, albeit in a different form. These camps are now ones to help ‘boys become men’ or in other words, camps where young gay men are ‘helped’ to become straight. Mothers bring their sons to change them, make them fit better into a world they think exists. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the horror at reading something and then realising that this is recent, real life history. This is tough to understand, to read the words that seem to stab your eyes as you do so, but it’s vital to learn about the two levels of brutality, separated across decades, that went on in such places.
The title is poignant. It means so much and delivers everything about the novel is those simple five words. The scope of the novel is ambitious and inspiring yet it goes further still. The time of apartheid is here with its clear lines between black and white clearly marked across society. Just when you think there is no more emotion that the author can wrangle from you, there is. The original inhabitants of the country are not respected and what’s more, are persecuted. Throughout the novel, the writer never flinches from the truth, however painful it might be. Words are weapons here and each one hits its target.
A novel which is a painful scar on our history. One that is still,sadly relevant today however. Bullies and those who feel superior think they can control other people. Money talks, and power talks. What was that famous phrase about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely? What are we and who are we, if we stand aside and do nothing?
An explosive read. Gripping and raw. Essential reading.
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