Product Description

In the sunny, jacaranda leafed garden of his Johannesburg home, six year old Martin Donally is king of a small and perfect world. It is 1948 and life is full of buoyant childish rhymes and his colourful, Irish extended family. There's exuberant Grandpa who sings and races horses; chain smoking Auntie Fee, who always sides with the ogres in fairy tales and who makes up her own stories about Martin's dead father; and above all Georgie, the family's Zulu servant and Martin's confidant. But this cosy world of fixed certainties is about to end as Martin's tale turns to one of political and personal tragedy. He can't possibly foresee the resounding defeat of the liberal government that will usher in a new era of bigotry and intolerance, nor appreciate the significance of the fact Dr Voerwoerd, architect of apartheid, is a neighbour. And what is he to make of dour, racist, Presbyterian Gordon his mother's husband-to-be, a man who seems determined to shatter the care-free world of the Donally's for good? Heaven Forbid is a wise, moving tale of innocence blighted and paradise lost; an unforgettable novel of childhood, family and the impact on a private world of a crucial moment in history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #347804 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 356 pages

Review
'a clever, economical novel... a potent rendering of childhood' - Penelope Lively; 'a vivid, tender evocation of time and place, fresh and unsugared by nostalgia' - Observer; 'catches precisely the way that children perceive things... a wonderful, absorbing read' - The Irish Times; 'immensely alive and involving' - Sunday Times; 'stylishly readable, true, and beguiling' - Time Out; 'the intensity of feelings, observations, misunderstandings is rich and deeply conveyed' - The Scotsman

About the Author
Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg. He has published six novels: A Separate Development (winner of 1981 David Higham Prize), Kruger's Alp (winner of the 1985 Whitbread Prize for Fiction), The Hottentot Room (1986), My Chocolate Redeemer (1989), Serenity House (shortlisted for 1992 Booker Prize), The Love Songs of Nathan J. Swirsky (1993), Darkest England (1996) and Me, the Moon and Elvis Presley (1997). He has written two other works of non-fiction: White Boy Running (winner of the 1998 CNA[South Africa]) and Moscow! Moscow! (1990).

Customer Reviews

Mesmerising
...The child's point-of-view is often overused in contemporary fiction and tends to be an adult narrator looking back and seeing things through the eyes of their childhood selves. In Heaven Forbid the narrator is a child, and believably so, and as such totally refreshing. The book's insights into the birth of apartheid are well-handled, and the sense of the country choosing the wrong path is echoed in Martin's homelife.
Everything seems to be in a state of gradually falling to pieces. But this is by no means a grim book - far from it. It is an exuberant and likeable story and one which I cannot recommend highly enough. A Booker Prize contender perhaps? It's certainly as good as Frayn's 'Spies' which I would consider the year's strongest novel so far (March 2002).