Books

Traitor's Daughter

(unpublished manuscript shortlisted for African Non-Fiction Writing Prize 2010)

A white Afrikaner childhood under apartheid spent torn between two worlds. The story tells of a coming of age between hell and paradise as one branded the traitor’s daughter. A journalist father’s exposés of the Broederbond, the powerful secret Afrikaner society, affects the whole family. Often seen as pariahs in their own community, the Serfontein family spent years isolated before being able to reach out publicly across cultural and racial barriers welcoming some of the future leaders of southern Africa into their home. The tale spans five decades of rejection and belonging, of searching for an identity in a country caught in the paradox of loss and gain. It's an emotional narrative about a country struggling through painful political and social changes. It highlights the high personal price many paid for the freedom that would come.

96,000 words

From Rock to Kraut

From urban South Africa to ancient, small-town Trier in Germany. One scribes tales of everyday life among the Krauts, spiced with memorable, historical encounters.

Anli's first book From Rock to Kraut, describing her journey from South Africa to finally settling in Germany, was published in March 2008. The book is available via most online bookshops worldwide. The book is divided into short thematic chapters, which makes for easy reading. The book was displayed at the Leipzig Book Fair and will be on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In August 2008, the book was chosen as Book of the Month, by veteran publisher Vito von Eichborn and printed in a new edition.

Backcover

A Rock is a derogatory term for people of Afrikaans descent, while a Kraut is an offensive name for a German. Here, however, the terms are used lovingly and self-deprecatingly, as South African born author Anli Serfontein humorously narrates the story of her journey from urban Johannesburg to small-town Trier in Germany.

She takes the reader on a journey through everyday life, as she struggles to deal with convoluted red-tape, arrogant teachers, extreme tidiness and the inability of eighty million people to queue. She battles to keep up with the locals and their town-, and wine- and harvest- festivals. Her tale is spiced with accounts of her travels as a television researcher, meeting Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn in Rotterdam days before his murder or speaking to the last surviving officer to be with Hitler in the Berlin bunker during the last days of the war.

Visit the website of From Rock to Kraut.

Find out where to buy the book

Extract from Chapter: Trier Roman(tic)

"Since being founded by the Romans in 17 BC, Constantine the Great bestowed Trier with its Golden Age; Karl Marx was born here and the apostle Matthew is supposed to be buried here; while the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre was here as a Second World War POW, and William Turner painted it."

"This has become my home: Germany’s oldest town with its Catholic conservatism, its staggering beauty, its steep vineyards, its Moselle viniculture and traditions, the Roman ruins scattered around every corner."