Blood’s Inner Rhyme

A poet goes back to the Free State plains where she grew up, home also to her mother, the writer Dot Serfontein. Now about ninety, frail and in need of constant care, the mother is still sharp-witted and funny, and as gifted a writer as her daughter. Mixing letters, diary entries and carers’ reports and crossing the borders between genres, the book explores a bond that both fascinates and torments the daughter: the gulf between two generations, but also their love and mutual admiration, with the Anglo-Boer War, land, race and love across the colour line in the background.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

248 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

South Africa

First published

2025 by Penguin Books

Author's age

73 when first published

ISBN

9781776391837 (original)

9781776391813 (Penguin Books, South Africa)