Outside the Walls

By: Lawrence Bransby

Narrated by: Lawrence Bransby

It is only when 17-year-old John Sanders actually meets the squatters who are putting up their makeshift shacks of plastic and wattle branches and stolen corrugated iron on an unused piece of waste land near the bottom of his parents’ house, that he is able to come to terms with his own loneliness, his bitterness toward his father, who left home.

He meets Phillip, who borrows tools to work on a stolen kombi taxi, the simpleminded Nokuthula, whose family was murdered, the boy with the face of a lizard, and the baby with a too large head...and as he tentatively enters their world just after the first democratic election in South Africa of Nelson Mandela and the beginning of the Rainbow Nation, John begins to break down the walls behind which he has hidden for so long, breaks down his ironic shield that he uses to smother his love for Gweneth and his father. He learns to put aside his racism, his fear of opening himself to people, his cynicism about life.

Lawrence Bransby now lives in Manchester after retiring from a lifetime of teaching. In his spare time, he indulges his passion for long-distance motorcycle travel and kayaking.

©1995 Lawrence Bransby (P)2021 Lawrence Bransby