Asleep Awake Asleep - by Jo-Ann Bekker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In smoky newsrooms and idyllic suburbs, the fate of a nation takes course.

With 39 interlinked stories, journalist Jo-Ann Bekker charts South Africa's turbulent history through the eyes of Rip--child, adult, mother, reporter, betrayer and betrayed--from the dark days of Apartheid through fledgling democracy. From political assassinations to the loss of childhood innocence, to questions of complicity and reparation, these vignettes explore the everyday lives that carried on within--and despite--a country in turmoil.

An anthropological treasure with excruciating relevancy, Asleep Awake Asleep asks the question of how citizens of a nation must adapt in an age of government corruption, power discrepancies, and racial violence.

The 39 interlinked stories in Asleep Awake Asleep can be read as a hand-drawn narrative map, charting the course of a country's turbulent history. Together they tell a coming of age and a coming to consciousness story, as Rip - child, adult, journalist, partner, mother - revisits milestones marked and signposts ignored or unseen. Set in the suburbs and newsrooms of South African towns and cities and their wilder surrounds, there are vignettes of relationships; tales of political assassinations, murder and betrayal, and questions asked about complicity and reparation.

Review Quotes

"Jo-Ann Bekker's collection of stories is an utter delight to read. Her imagination is wild and vast, her writing lyrical, tactile and sensual." -- Bridget Hilton-Barber, author of Garden of My Ancestors

"In the blue-black world of Bekker's South Africa the legacy of the past inscribes its history on all bodies. The bodies of chain-smoking reporters in 'unpredictable garments, ' of itinerate oboe players in the City of Roses, of baby starlings chucked through the dairy window to discourage the rats, all these and more bear upon them the marks of violence, of suppression, of life lived fitfully as if beneath a pall of smoke. And yet, this book's greatest strength is not the tenacity of the smoke but of the life that struggles through it. In a dazzling coil of interlinked tales Bekker mines the loaded seam between what we witness of the historical world amassing around us and what we internalize of that history into our remarkably unremarkable lives. In fairy tales and elegies, flash-bulb bright vignettes and elegant absurdities, Asleep Awake Asleep imagines the world as a response to the dream of self. It dares us to speculate on what the future may look like when that same self is no longer the property of history but its own true thing, blinking in the light." -- Sarah Blackman, author of Hex

"... an abundance of vivid, intelligent, exciting pieces in which a woman tells herself the story of a life..." -- Claire Robertson, author of Under Glass

"Bekker's spare blade slices her narrative world into impeccably formed morsels that nevertheless stick in the craw." -- Gillian Rennie, Grocott's Mail

"Bekker [demonstrates] acute observation, honesty, and the ability to build an important story from a seemingly tiny detail. [...] [This is] an extraordinary book." -- Suzy Brokensha, Fair Lady

"It is a quiet study of the everyday amidst a country's turbulent politics, national events and natural disasters. A thoughtful read that gently bids you to continue turning the pages." -- Tiah Beautement, Sunday Times Live

"I don't usually enjoy short stories. But this book is different. I recently saw two huge portraits that had been created using photographs. Close up the photos were visible. At a distance the photos became the colours of the portrait. This book is rather like that." - Judith Reynolds

"Jo-Ann Bekker's stories are carefully crafted. They take you on a journey into our recent history and into the personal. The writing is taut, nimble, a joy to read." - Cornelia Fick

"Delicate, unsentimental, frank, powerful ... The way [Bekker] use[s] clothes, hair, nature, cooking, to describe moods and drive[s] [the] narratives forward." -- Charlotte Bauer

"The semi-objective voice of the narrator Rip is spacious enough to let the emotional undercurrents speak for themselves." -- Robert Berold

"Bekker has a fascinating voice and she is not afraid to experiment with the short form. The individual pieces in this book range from flash fiction, arresting specific moments and moods, to interlinked tales, which record a life story. As a whole, it could be read as a short-story novel. The stories portray the loss of childhood's innocence; personal and professional awakenings; the entanglements of trust, betrayal and transgression; marriage, motherhood and other familial relationships; and the newsroom - everything unfolding against the background of the turbulent history of South Africa's (post)apartheid years." -- Karina Szczurek, LitNet

"These stories, in their strange mix of comfort and discomfort, are not dissimilar to the hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleep, and the unusual title can be taken as an instruction: they are best read one by one, preferably as you climb back into bed with a morning cup of tea before a second little sleep." -- Steve Kretzmann, Daily Maverick

About the Author

Jo-Ann Bekker began writing short fiction in 2012, after working as a newspaper reporter for many years. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University and her short fiction has been published in journals in South Africa and the United States. Asleep Awake Asleep is her first collection of stories. She was born in East London, and lives in Knysna with her family.