Celebrated author Elsa Joubert has been a traveller to foreign places all her life. With this memoir, completed in her 95th year, she explores the continent of old age. It is a searing, honest account of ageing, as she settles into a cosmopolitan Cape Town retirement home along with the Englishman across the passage, her Dutch friend Jo Struik, and the support of Stom Japie. It also tells of the force of returning memories; of her sister’s early death, rivalry with her brother, family holidays in Strand, and the delights of a garden. Interspersing acute insights with dark humour, this book is wise, courageous and deeply moving.
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Elsa Joubert was born in Paarl in 1922. Her early work took the form of travel writing, inspired by her extensive travels on the African continent. Her best-known work is The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena, which tells the story of a black woman struggling against the oppressive laws of apartheid. It won numerous local and international awards, including the Winifred Holtby Prize awarded by the British Royal Society of Literature. Translated into thirteen languages, it was selected at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair as one of the hundred most important African books of the 20th century. Joubert has been honoured for her body of work with honorary doctorates from the Universities of Stellenbosch (2001) and Pretoria (2007). In 2004 Joubert received South Africa’s highest cultural accolade, the Order of Ikhamanga. Completed when she was 95, Cul-de-sac is the third of Joubert’s autobiographical works following ‘n Wonderlike geweld and Reisiger. She lives in Cape Town.