It is a window into the shadowy corners of the mind of a man whose very being has shifted into inertia partly due to the dehumanisation he experienced after 18 years of incarceration during the apartheid years. It is a very different novel but also speaks to the theme of the fall from grace of our current government, compared to the values of the struggle days. It is almost serendipitous that I selected this as my next book to read after The Textures of Silence because it is also partly set in pre-democracy days. As I closed it on the last page all I wanted to do was read it again. The contemplations of this nameless man are profoundly simple yet achingly fashioned with beautiful language. It is perhaps more a novella than a novel with the intensity of 500 pages condensed and concentrated into 108 pages. How do I even begin to describe this jewel of a novel? Small Things is an almost poetic meditation that documents the musings and reflections of a man who was born in Sophiatown before it was dismantled and now finds himself in his sixties and unable to contend with the demise of principle.The setting is Johannesburg then and now.
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