The Castaways

Winner of both the Olive Schreiner Prize and the CNA Literary Award, The Castaways is a strikingly original novel.

The novel emerged in the early seventies as both an historical exploration of South Africa, and also as a metaphor for the oppressive apartheid society of that time. The story is set in the eighteenth century and brings together the catastrophe of a shipwreck and the turmoil of a mental breakdown.

Sheila Fugard takes the reader on an inner contemporary journey, while simultaneously exploring the struggle of the survivors of the actual wreck. The scrutiny is intense, the language evocative and filled with resonance's of both past and present. The themes of colonial conquest, the paranoia of terrorism, and the eternal quest for the self are expressed in superb lyrical passages. Many diverse voices from different ages in Africa echo through the text and will no doubt speak to a new generation of readers, with the same eloquence and riveting power as they did when the novel made its original début.