Playing in the Light Book

From the acclaimed South African novelist, a lyrical tale of self-discovery in post-apartheid cape town.

Set in a beautifully rendered 1990s Cape Town, Playing in the Light revolves around Marion, a woman of Afrikaner background, who hates traveling but nonetheless runs a travel agency, and her complex relationship with Brenda, the first black woman she has ever employed.

In writing as finely detailed and attuned to psychological nuance as Anita Brookner's, Wicomb depicts the life of a complicated, single woman in a changing and complicated place. Caught up in the narrow world of private interests and self-advancement, Marion eschews national politics until the exposures of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission lead to the discovery of a skeleton in the family cupboard. While her aging father is unable and unwilling to supply the truth, Marion's young employee becomes implicated in the piecing together of Marion's past, leading to a defining transformation and widening of Marion's world.

In this impeccably wrought new work, the acclaimed author of You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town provides wisdom and insight about the new South Africa and about people everywhere.

The New Yorker

In her ambitious third novel, Wicomb explores South Africa’s history through a woman’s attempt to answer questions surrounding her past. Marion Campbell discovers that she is the daughter of “play-whites,” a couple legally classified as “coloured” who dared to obliterate their history and cut family ties in order to acquire the benefits of whiteness. Marion’s mother plastered herself with makeup to prevent her body from betraying her; in her father’s view, “whiteness is without restrictions. It has the fluidity of milk; its glow is far-reaching.” The subterfuge, however, made for an unhappy household. Marion’s friendship with a young black woman deepens her understanding of the importance of historical memory, and her struggle for self-knowledge becomes, in Wicomb’s able hands, a sign of South Africa’s hopeful post-apartheid future.