Mda examines the complicated relationship between Afrikaners and black South Africans in a small town in the Free State platteland, where, as usual in small towns, politics has much more to do with individuals and what happened between them a few decades ago than with big national issues. In Excelsior, the defining event in recent history has been the arrest of five white men and fourteen black women from the town under the Immorality Acts in 1971. The white men were all prominent figures in the Afrikaner community, and their activities lead to the birth of a surprising number of mixed-race babies.

We follow one of the women, Nikki, and her daughter Popi, through the declining years of apartheid and the first decade of democracy: the optimistic coming to power of the ANC, the lofty socialist ideals that gradually slide off into corruption and capitalist "enterprise schemes", the disenchantment of the Afrikaners who feel they aren't being given a chance to contribute to the new society, and so on. Underlying it all is the comfortable notion that, at a personal level, Afrikaner farmers and rural black people have far more in common than they think they do, and it's only those nasty middle-class ideas from the city that are driving them apart. Much the same reasoning that you find in nostalgic rural fiction from Attlee-era Britain. Which, oddly enough, is almost always written either by nasty middle-class people from the cities or by (former) aristocratic landowners, never by actual peasants.

Still, politically dubious though it might be, it's an attractive story, with strong, funny characters, interwoven with luscious descriptions of Van-Gogh-esque paintings of rural life by a local artist.

Narrator Robin Miles obviously isn't South African, but she does a pretty convincing job with the strongly-defined Sotho and Afrikaner voices, only breaking the illusion slightly with some odd pronunciations of Afrikaans placenames. ( )

This was a bland book with cardboard characters that were moved around in obvious ways to stand for certain generalized experiences of South Africans living through the late apartheid era, and on into the post-apartheid era. The blend here between fact and fiction did not take off--the story makes weird and unnecessary changes from the facts of Excelsior, while the fiction feels like heavy dough that never rises. The book disappointed me especially because I really enjoyed Mda's Ways of Dying, which was in every way a surprising and marvelous first novel. ( )

Very nice. Zakes Mda has a way with words and the story is quite interesting. He manages to show the complexities of apartheid and of the South African society. ( )

Very well-written story of family in South Africa. This takes place both during and after apartheid. I like how Mda kept my interest and attention be sharing only a little of the details. I felt for these people even though there was much I did not know about them. ( )

A truly artistic tale told during the end of Apartheid in South Africa. During a time when it was illegal for whites to have sex with blacks, one of the protagonists, Niki, is put on trial and spends time in prison for giving birth to a blue eyed daughter Popi. The story then follows Niki, her son Viliki and Popi through the end of apartheid and post apartheid worlds. All the while Popi tries to find her place in the world, never feeling totally black, and never white.

Although the story is amazing, the beauty is in the way Mda tells the story. He brilliantly mends together descriptions of painting of the characters with stories of the characters lives, creating a vivid picture of the Rainbow Nation. ( )