Saturday, November 2, 2013

The Walk


It started at Lambasi in northern Pondoland and it ended not far from what we now know as Port Elizabeth. It is a hike that every South African should have the privilege of taking. For the survivors of the Grosvenor, as they clambered onto the rocks in 1792, they might as well have crash landed on Mars. 

Walk takes the reader, step by step, day by day, on the castaway's horrific journey. While indisputably fiction, it steers a good deal closer to the historical truth than most nonfiction found on the shelves.

Walk is tale of suffering rivaling Aspley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World. It is the true story of a boy's survival in the face of impossible odds. It is a haunting parable on the meeting of Europe and Africa.