A State of Fear, by Menán du Plessis (used)

This first novel by an excitingly articulate new writer is the first previously unpublished work to appear originally in Africa South Paperbacks.

The setting is Cape Town in the stormy winter of 1980, a time of open unrest - the bus boycott, the meat boycott, the boycotting of classes at black and so-called 'Coloured' schools. The novel consists of the deliberately subjective narrative of Anna Rossouw, a young white teacher at a Coloured high school, who shelters two of her pupils when they arrive on her doorstep. They are engaged in some kind of political resistance, though Anna never quite knows what: from one night-mission Wilson does not return; Felicia moves out soon afterwards.

Anna's concern for them is central to her attempts to understand herself within the disturbed society of which she is part and yet not part, as is her reconstruction of her own childhood and family relationships. People and places are vividly portrayed in the real and imaginary events of this probing, sensitive story.

The author was born in Cape Town in 1952 and went to school and the university there. She was co-founder and later national chairperson of National Youth Action, an organization which sought to fight racial discrimination in education. Poetry and criticism by her have appeared in various small magazines and she is well into her next novel. She has currently returned to UCT as a postgraduate student in linguistics.

Winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize 1985

Condition: slightly worn but fair