The Thin Line, by Arja Salafranca

The stories in The Thin Line hook the reader from the first one, and reel you in on that thin line. You will be haunted by the carefully drawn characters: by Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, by Cleo in love with a married man after all these years, and poor skinny Mark, as he sees his love teeter away from him. Salafranca is an accomplished, award-winning writer, this long-awaited collection is a box of jewels. 

These stories chart a new direction in South African fiction, where each line, each page - each story unfolds subtly, reaching deeper and more intimately into the tender spaces that exist in all our lives between love and doubt. Reading them kept me up late at night, wanting to know more about the characters lives. I was enthralled by the clarity and compassion of her insights; and moved by her obvious love for our fragile country and the fierce power of our unrelinquished hopes.' Hamilton Wende author of House of War