cover image Where Sixpence Lives

Where Sixpence Lives

Norma Kitson. Random House (UK), $15.95 (326pp) ISBN 978-0-7012-0772-4

In this stirring autobiography, Kitson, nee Cranko, recalls her struggle to redress wrongs in her native South Africa. Born in 1933 into a wealthy Jewish family in Durban, the author early on became aware of the gulf between white privilege and black servitude. In the 1950s, inspired by her father, she became a Communist and began working with leaders in the liberation movement. In London she met and married David Kitson, also a committed revolutionary. Knowing the dangers that awaited them, they returned to South Africa with their baby Steven in order to join the fray. While their second child, Amandlastet, was still quite small, David was arrested, tortured and sent to prison for 20 years (and released only in 1984), and Kitson herself was imprisoned and brutalized. After returning to Britain, Kitson founded the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group and continued efforts to attain the release of her husband and other political prisoners. Although the chronology of events is patchy, Kitson's story is compelling, and her accounts of the South African regime's brutality and of infighting in the African National Congress are eye-opening. (September)