The lion seeker : a novel

Resource Information

The work The lion seeker : a novel represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in City Libraries, City of Gold Coast. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

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Label

The lion seeker : a novel

Title remainder

a novel

Statement of responsibility

Kenneth Bonert

Creator

• trueBonert, Kenneth

Author

• trueBonert, Kenneth

Subject

• trueInner city
• trueJews
• Jews -- South Africa -- Fiction
• Johannesburg (South Africa) -- Fiction
• trueJohannesburg, South Africa -- Race relations
• truePoverty
• trueRacism -- South Africa
• trueSocial classes -- South Africa
• trueSouth Africa -- History -- 1909-1961
• South Africa -- History -- 1909-1961 -- Fiction
• trueSouth Africa -- Race relations
• trueYoung men
• trueDepressions
• trueFamilies
• trueFamily secrets
• Fiction
• trueImmigrants

Genre

• Fiction

Language

eng

Summary

Are you a stupid or a clever? Such is the refrain in Isaac Helger's mind as he makes his way from redheaded hooligan to searching adolescent to striving young man on the make. His mother's question haunts every choice. Are you a stupid or a clever? Will you find a way to lift your family out of Johannesburg's poor inner city, to buy a house in the suburbs, to bring your aunts and cousins from Lithuania? Isaac's mother is a strong woman and a scarred woman; her maimed face taunts him with a past no one will discuss. As World War II approaches, then falls upon them, they hurtle toward a catastrophic reckoning. Isaac must make decisions that, at first, only seem to be life-or-death, then actually are. Meanwhile, South Africa's history, bound up with Europe's but inflected with its own accents--Afrikaans, Zulu, Yiddish, English--begins to unravel. Isaac's vibrant, working-class, Jewish neighborhood lies near the African slums; under cover of night, the slums are razed, the residents forced off to townships. Isaac's fortune-seeking takes him to the privileged seclusion of the Johannesburg suburbs, where he will court forbidden love. It partners him with the unlucky, unsinkable Hugo Bleznick, selling miracle products to suspicious farmers. And it leads him into a feud with a grayshirt Afrikaaner who insidiously undermines him in the auto shop, where Isaac has found the only work that ever felt true. And then his mother's secret, long carefully guarded, takes them to the diamond mines, where everything is covered in a thin, metallic dust, where lions wait among desert rocks, and where Isaac will begin to learn the bittersweet reality of success bought at truly any cost. A thrilling ride through the life of one fumbling young hero, The Lion Seeker is a glorious reinvention of the classic family and coming-of-age sagas. We are caught--hearts open and wrecked--between the urgent ambitions of a mother who knows what it takes to survive and a son straining against the responsibilities of the old world, even as he is endowed with the freedoms of the new

Storyline

• trueOwn voices

Tone

• trueStrong sense of place

Writing style

• trueStylistically complex
• trueEngaging
• trueLush

Character

• trueReligiously diverse
• trueCulturally diverse

Award

• Canadian Jewish Book Award, 2014.
• Edward Lewis Wallant Award, 2013.

Dewey number

823/.92

Index

no index present

Literary form

fiction