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If You Can Walk, You Can Dance
by Marion Molteno
4.1
4.1 out of 5
Creators
AuthorMarion Molteno
PublisherOlive Turtle
SynopsisJennie de Villiers, an idealistic and politically engaged student, suddenly has to flee her native South Africa with a boyfriend whom she no longer loves—only to be stranded as an exile in neighbouring Swaziland. Fending for herself in a new culture, she discovers new ways of living and a kind of music that moves her deeply. As the story moves between Africa and 1970s London, the music of different cultures is woven through the narrative. Jennie works, studies, learns music and tries to bring these various strands together to create a fulfilling and meaningful life, as well as discover her way forward—personally and professionally. Lyrically written, extremely engrossing and deeply moving, If you can walk you can dance exemplifies the thought—‘the personal is political’. Its depiction of a young woman’s life as she travels across frontiers and cultures reaffirms the healing power of music and the redemptive nature of human connections.
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Binding: HardCover
About the author
Marion Molteno grew up in South Africa and left after being in conflict with the apartheid regime. She spent eight years in Zambia and since then has been based in London. She has had a long association with India and Pakistan through her work with South Asian communities in the UK and with Save the Children, with whom she travelled extensively in Asia and Africa. She studied Urdu with the eminent scholar Ralph Russell and edits his work, most recently The Famous Ghalib: The Sound of My Moving Pen.
Her fiction reflects the unusual range of her life experience and several of her books have won prizes. Her most recent novel, Uncertain Light, set partly in India and Central Asia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was shortlisted for the international Indie Book Awards. A Shield of Coolest Air, which reflects the experience of Somali asylum seekers in London, won the David Thomas Prize for fiction. Somewhere more Simple explores relationships between local people and newcomers in a group of islands off the coast of Cornwall. Her short stories, A Language in Common, give a picture of the lives of women who were among the first South Asian immigrants into the UK and was translated into Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi. ‘The Bracelets’ was a winner in the London Short Story Prize.
