K. Sello Duiker was, before his death in 2005, widely regarded as South Africa’s most promising young writer. Thirteen Cents, his first novel, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book Award (Africa Region) and has gone on to become a modern South African classic. This is a new edition of a Duiker’s explosive debut.
Every city has an unspoken side. Cape Town, between the picture postcard mountain and sea, has its own shadow: a place of dislocation and uncertainty, dependence and desperation, destruction and survival, gangsters, pimps, pedophiles, hunger, hope, and moments of happiness. Living in this shadow is Azure, a thirteen-year-old who makes his living on the streets, a black teenager sought out by white men, beholden to gang leaders but determined to create some measure of independence in this...
