Tsk-Tsk: The Story of a Child at Large by Suzan Hackney is out now from Jonathan Ball Publishers.

“A beautiful memoir, written with a creative flair that many fiction writers would envy. Sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes unbearably sad, always honest, it is a gripping account of a childhood gone horribly wrong. The fact that the child survived to write this illuminating book, makes me very happy.” – Marita van der Vyver

‘I was made in Coffee Bay. Right there on the beach, in the sand.’ From the opening lines, we are drawn in and engrossed by this startling memoir.

When Suzan is adopted by a well-to-do Pietermaritzburg family in the late 1960s, she is set on a collision course with her adoptive mother and with polite society. Suzan grabs her childhood life with unrestrained zeal and boundless energy – an exuberance that is barely tolerated by her mother, and which spirals into rebellion, landing her in a place of safety at the age of 13.

As a ward of the state, Suzan fights to survive in a world of drugs and prostitution. She tells her story with a sometimes tender, often angry, frequently funny eye in this engrossing tale of a singular childhood.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Jonathan Ball Publishers New books New releases Suzan Hackney Tsk-Tsk: The Story of a Child at Large