cover image Poppie Nongena

Poppie Nongena

Elsa Joubert. Henry Holt & Company, $8.95 (359pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-0230-0

A gifted South African writer presents the struggle of an indomitable Xhosa woman to keep her family together, to resist the pass laws and to remain in Cape Town and not relocate to her husband's bleak homeland of Ciskei. PW called this a ""sad, grave tale that overwhelms us with its artful telling.'' (April)