Homeland

In 2010, as South Africa prepared for the World Cup, Time magazine contributor CL Bell travels to the old Transkei, Nelson Mandela's heartland, to report on how democracy has changed the lives for those who still live in tribal villages, under the rule of chiefs. The stories she uncovers, including those of women chiefs living in fear of assassination, give voice to South Africans who are rarely heard.

Homeland, however, is more than reportage. CL Bell was part of the last generation of white South Africans to grow up under apartheid. As she travels deeper into the Xhosa tribal lands, Bell comes face to face with the deep scars within her: the ignorance and fears born of an apartheid childhood.

Homeland does not set out to provide an exhaustive account of the complexity of contemporary South African politics, rather it is an essay on how we make sense of the present when we are shackled by our past.

It would sit comfortably on the shelf alongside Alexander Fuller's Scribbling the Cat and Doris Lessing's Going Home.