ISBN 978-1-946395-25-2 | paperback | $12.99 | publication date Jan 2020
The books in our new Intimate Geographies series answer the question: If you could read only one book about a place – to understand it, to glimpse its soul – which book would it be? These books will help locals and travelers get under the skin of fascinating places that often remain elusive and enigmatic because of their diversity and difference. As short books of around 100 pages each, they allow you to quickly identify the unique pulse of a city, the throbbing historical, social, cultural and political beat that underlies the interactions of the people who live within it. An incisive mix of travel narrative, literary non-fiction, and personal memoir, these books are written by authors who have enjoyed lengthy lived experiences in these cities. Thus, they are not guidebooks, but their perfect companions, filling in the intimate details that other sources leave out. The first volume Cape Town: A Place Between is written by Henry Trotter, who will also serve as the series editor going forward.
Unflinching portrayal of an enigmatic metropolis drawing on Trotter’s experiences with prostitutes, sailors, minstrels, professors, pupils, gangsters, politicians, and ‘poo-throwing’ protestors.
Cape Town is a place between. Between two oceans, between first and third worlds, between east and west. So too the majority of its citizens, a people between black and white, native and settler, African and European. The Cape coloureds. This tween-ness complicates and perplexes. It threatens key conceptions we have about the histories, identities, and cultures of those who live on the continent. It makes us wonder how we can understand a city that is most assuredly in Africa, though not—seemingly—of it?
By exploring these liminal spaces of “tween-ness”—between the Cape’s breath-taking beauty and its shattering violence, between its creative cosmopolitanism and its crude racial divisions, between its glitzy wealth and its grinding poverty—we can begin to understand the soul of this town. Haunted by its past, unsure of its future. Always emerging, never arriving. A sun-drenched peninsula best viewed through a prism noir.
Written in accessible, punchy prose, Cape Town: A Place Between offers a portrait rendered with humor, wit and passion, based on the author’s twenty-year relationship with the Cape.
Reviews
“Henry Trotter writes incisively and with verve about his encounters of everyday life and the contexts in which they were shaped in Cape Town. As a local who grew up in Athlone, I recognize so many of the points of reference he makes about the resilience of the people of the Cape Flats, written in the ‘thick descriptive’ style of urban narrative sociology. A wonderful read.” – Wilmot James, author of Grape: Stories of the Vineyard in South Africa
“Cape Town: A Place Between is a captivating portrayal of a complex city, told from the unique perspective of an outsider whose heart and mind found fulfillment in a faraway land. Trotter’s humor and affection for the places and people of his adopted home help the reader form a personal connection to Cape Town’s history and culture. It’s unlike any travel book I’ve read.” – Kimberly Lisagor, co-author of Disappearing Destinations
“[Trotter] writes with self-effacing humor, filling this story with personal anecdotes – some hilarious and others tragic –while staying true to the complicated and still confusing history of the city. […] Capetonians will recognize their beautiful and complicated city while visitors will gain an essential understanding of this fascinating place.” ―Nancy Clark & Bill Worger, authors of South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid
“Incorporating elements of memoir, guide book, socio-political history and travelogue, Trotter tells a compelling story and captures the essence of what makes the Mother City so irresistible on the one hand, and so impossible to grasp on the other.” —Karina Szczurek, Cape Times
The Author
Henry Trotter is the author of Sugar Girls & Seamen: A Journey into the World of Dockside Prostitution in South Africa. Hailing from California, he has lived in Africa for 20 years and written extensively on African history, culture and education. He is based in Cape Town with his wife and daughter.