Sugar Town Queens, by Malla Nunn

Amandla is 15 and living in a one-room shack in a shanty town on the outskirts of Durban with her mother Annalisa. They are an oddity in Sugar Town in many ways; Annalisa is white, has holes in her memory and a sometimes tenuous grip on reality. Mixed race Amandla knows nothing about her origins or how they came to live in the slum she desperately wants to escape. The accidental discovery of her mother’s family leads Amandla and her good friends on a quest to find out Annalisa’s history and her own. What they discover forges new and rewarding relationships and sets them all up for a different future. Nunn paints a really interesting picture of modern ‘rainbow’ South Africa from the point of view of a teenage girl. The story has an almost fairy tale quality, despite or perhaps because of the real world threats and dangers that are part of everyday life in the city. Amandla and her crew are sharp and funny; they take the reader along for the ride, feeling the highs and lows along with them.