Black Swan, by Christopher Hope (used)

Second-hand copy — condition: good.

A novella by South African writer Christopher Hope.

South Africa in the 1960s - the granite years.

Lucky is a dreamy teenager living in a large black township on the Highveld. He does not respond to ordinary school lessons - but one day sees a film of Swan Lake and watches in amazement these beings in white, as if from another planet, moving in time to the music.

So begins a personal odyssey that takes the boy away from his township, out of his home country altogether to a guerilla training camp in East Germany ... then back into South Africa on a bombing raid. He is captured and put on trial.

But through it all he carries with him his special dream of freedom which scandalises his friends and outrages his enemies. It is a vision of a magical place where anyone may become a swan and death itself is outdanced.

Arrow, 1988.