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Stealing Water A Secret Life in an African City Tim Ecott

Stealing Water A Secret Life in an African City Tim Ecott

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Tim Ecotts family swapped Northern Ireland for apartheid Johannesburg in the 1970s. But just six months after arriving the family was bankrupt, evicted from their home and most of their possessions had been confiscated by the bailiffs. Whilst friends and relatives imagined they were living enviable lives in the sun, the reality was that the family was cast adrift. Forced to survive on their wits, they entered a twilight world where their true friends were prostitutes, thieves and renegades. At the heart of STEALING WATER is Tims mother, who rises magnificently to the occasion keeping the family afloat with her shop, The Whatnot. Situated in an arcade running underneath the streets of Johannesburg its the perfect place to keep below the radar of the police. Funny, witty, and affecting this is a very different African memoir about the true value of friendship and how the worst of times can become the most important and valuable period of a persons life.
Publisher: Sceptre
Published date: 2008
Page count: 304
Dimensions: Height:23.00 cm
Thickness:3.00 cm
Weight:500g
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R
Rochelle Coetsee
Stealing Water A Secret Life in an African City Tim Ecott

The writing is smooth and free flowing. The author is sincere, and humorous. The book is mostly located in Johannesburg, where a family moved there in the 1970s, but the author also describes a brief stay in Malaysia and his frequent trips to Northern Ireland. Although Ecott, goes and describes the circumstances of poor, English-speaking immigrants that are in South Africa at the time and he also paints a Joburg that is no longer there.

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