"A hilarious memoir by a great South African essayist. As good an account as you’ll find about life in the country today."

"The first movie I ever saw in my life, interestingly enough, was The Gods Must Be Crazy. It was a South African movie. It’s ironic that years later, the next most commercially successful film from South Africa after The Gods Must Be Crazy is District 9. The effect was kind of an early imprint that South Africa belonged in motion pictures. Because there was nothing else for years, as I became an adult — or even a young man — I kind of realized it didn’t. Everything that South Africa made was terrible that I subsequently saw. Usually I was just ashamed of it. I was like, “Oh God, we make terrible television, we make terrible movies.” And even with Marius Weyers doing the South African accent — something that was uniquely South African and African could be commercial was just imprinted in my brain."

"A classic that won the National Book Award in 2011. The author lived through Hurricane Katrina, and this is her fictional story about an African-American family before and after the storm."