Garton

Home is the place in which you grew up, always determined to escape from. Then finally at journey’s end, this same homeland is the safe place you instinctively ache to return to. Homelands is an old man’s compilation of short stories sourced from the rich folklore of his hometown, the colonial village of Harding, in the scenic southern reaches of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

These historical tales are interwoven with his latter-day experiences of life in Australia, an adopted homeland in which he has never felt comfortably at home. Cut adrift in an affluent society built on privilege and entitlement, he misses the honesty and simplicity of his previous life.

The delightfully eccentric old man, displaying signs of early on-set dementia and with an enduring taste for whisky and beer, catches a train into the city of Melbourne but on arrival finds he has forgotten the reason for doing so. Confused but philosophical, he limps off in a dwaal, a reflective, stream-of-consciousness meander, where various sights, sounds and big-city experiences trigger memories of those indelible stories from his boyhood homeland.

Homelands is an immersive, provocative read, with a self-deprecating narrative that shifts from socio-political critique of both homelands, to hilariously funny (and sometimes disturbingly sad or sadly disturbing!) yarns and anecdotes on the old man’s formative years in the old South Africa.