Book Description
What Hope Have You! is a story of three families in South Africa, one white, one black and one of mixed race. The story extends over four generations and is about a society rooted in colonialism and ruled by apartheid. It is told, in part, by Kate, great-grandaughter of a Jewish couple who leave their home in Eastern Europe in the 1870s because of racial intolerance and emigrate to South Africa where diamonds have recently been discovered. The Prologue sets the theme of the novel. The sunny days spent on picnics, a metaphor for the carefree lifestyle of white people, while the sudden thunder storms implies periodic Black unrest. The Gothic reference of the waving willow trees forebodes trouble and the laying down together of the orphaned lion cub and the lamb, promises hope and reconciliation.
