Coconut

Kopano Matlwa · 2007 CE · Novel · South African · Contemporary

Two black teenage girls in post-apartheid Johannesburg tell their stories in turn: Ofilwe, from a newly middle-class family in Sandton, at a formerly white private school, and Fikile, a township orphan waitressing at the suburban coffee shop where Ofilwe's family eat. Each is called a coconut, black outside and white inside, and each is trying to settle what she wants to be. It won the European Union Literary Award and is a frank early account of the first post-apartheid generation.

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