Making Apartheid Real: A Novel That Gives You Lived Experience Through the Characters

History was my worst subject at school. But reading Fiona Sussman’s Shifting Colours made the experience of apartheid in South Africa real, as experienced by the people in this story.

Early in the book (in 1960), Celia and her young daughter Miriam are walking home from church when they see police hunting down a black boy. They hide in the shrubs, terrified, and watch the police beat the boy nearly to death before throwing him in the back of a truck. The scene is brutal. It sets up the choice Celia faces: keep her daughter in this violent world or let her go to England with the white family she works for.

Celia sends five-year-old Miriam away – telling her it’s for a holiday, but it turns out to be for life. We see this decision through Celia’s eyes. I understood why she did it. Miriam got a better life, but Celia paid for it.

The book splits after they separate. The early chapters stay with Celia in South Africa. Later ones follow Miriam in England. Miriam grows up feeling “separate and wooden” until she meets her friend Zelda and finds acceptance. She’s caught between the mother she loved and the country that nearly destroyed them both.

The South African scenes hit hardest. Not because the English sections were flat, but because they felt familiar to me. The violence, the relationships under apartheid, how people actually lived through it – I’d never understood it like this before.

This is a good read, but it goes much deeper than entertainment. If, like me, you struggle to read non-fiction history books, this novel will deepen your understanding of apartheid through the experiences of the characters.