Hope, Christopher

(South African, 1944– )

Hope's early (and, some think, his best) novels were satirical, blisteringly powerful attacks on South African apartheid laws. Start with A Separate Development (1980), about the decline of a mixed-race boy, Harry Moto, who leaves his home in a privileged white community and begins to live as a black. Move on to Kruger's Alp (1984), an allegorical quest story which surveys the political and historical landscape of Afrikaner society, considering questions of corruption and deceit. Hope's concerns have shifted with political developments. Serenity House (1992) sets the corruption of a modern, mercenary society against that of Nazi Germany as Max, resident in an old people's home, faces a secret investigation into his past. Hope's prose is clear and economical, but his sensitive analyses of these complicated, politically sensitive situations always resist simplification.

Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee  SR