Asleep Awake Asleep

In smoky newsrooms and idyllic suburbs, the fate of a nation takes course.

With 39 interlinked stories, former journalist Jo-Ann Bekker charts South Africa’s turbulent history through the eyes of Rip—child, adult, mother, reporter, betrayer and betrayed—from the dark days of Apartheid through fledgling democracy. From political assassinations to the loss of childhood innocence, to questions of complicity and reparation, these vignettes explore the everyday lives that carried on within—and despite—a country in turmoil.

The 39 interlinked stories in Asleep Awake Asleep can be read as a hand-drawn narrative map, charting the course of a country’s turbulent history. Together they tell a coming of age and a coming to consciousness story, as Rip – child, adult, journalist, partner, mother – revisits milestones marked and signposts ignored or unseen. Set in the suburbs and newsrooms of South African towns and cities and their wilder surrounds, there are vignettes of relationships; tales of political assassinations, murder and betrayal, and questions asked about complicity and reparation.