Dance of the Rain: Grade 10, Grade 11, Grade 12

If you left South Africa in the late 1940s and came back in the late 1990s, what would you find? Jonathan Clarke returns to South Africa after more than fifty years in search of his lost childhood. He is surprised by what he finds. He undertakes a nostalgic journey through the Waterberg in the hope of finding his two best friends: Lukie from a fiercely Afrikaner nationalist family, and Lynie from the opposite side of the political spectrum. At the centre of Jonathan’s memories is the passionate teacher of Christian National Education, Miss Bril, reciting Eugène Marais’s poetry. The small Waterberg town of Nijlsrivier, once a bastion of Afrikaner Nationalism’s grand illusion, has changed beyond recognition; but, in Dance of the Rain, Tom Naudé captures half a century’s turbulent history and weaves into it an unforgettable love story. Introduction by Professor Kole Omotoso, the well known Nigerian author.