The Children`s Day by Michiel Heyns

Softcover published by Jonathan Ball 2002

The tender chronicle of a boy's coming of age in South Africa during the apartheid years of the sixties, The Children's Day captures the essence of growing up in a world fraught with the strange and sometimes violent contradictions of class, race, gender, and language. The widening world of adolescence, in all its allure and confusion, is explored through the eyes of Simon, who struggles to make sense of the adults around himtorn between scorn for his surroundings and a desire to belong.

This debut novel is peopled with poignant, vulnerable, and sometimes eccentric characters, and it is through their lives that Simon comes to understand the complexities of love.