This Is South Africa, Peter Borchert, Penguin Random House South Africa, ISBN: 9781775845157
THIS coffee table book encapsulates South Africa and instead of trying to explain this country to a foreigner, just give them this book.
Peter Borchert’s This is South Africa is also a must-have for the home library. It reminds one of the beauty, the contradictions and nuances, the textures, colour and quirkiness of South Africa.
If you are immigrating, you should take this book with you, but beware, it showcases the exquisiteness of the country to the extent that you may just change your mind and start unpacking.
As the author humbly admits in the introduction: “…how can one tell the story of South Africa completely and to the satisfaction of all in the space of a few thousand words”.
True, but he has done a damn fine job of giving an overview and then zoning in on areas of interest.
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The breathtaking, more than 300 vivid new photographs, supported by a detailed introduction and informative captions, makes one re-appreciate the beauty that is South Africa, and you can’t help smiling to yourself and thinking: If I was a tourist, or immigrant, this is where I would want to visit or move.”
The overview includes bits about the land, the people, the history and regions. The book then meanders around the country giving spectacular photographic glimpses of country’s many jewels from Namaqualand and the daisies to the game farms and Zululand, highlighting each provinces many wonderful sites to visit and re-visit.
These pictures certainly paint more than a thousand words and, if you have already left the country, make you terribly, terribly homesick. Peter Borchert has a long and distinguished career in publishing. He is a former managing director of Struik Publishers, founder and publisher of the award-winning magazines Africa Geographic and Africa – Birds & Birding and co-founder of Untold Africa, a website dedicated to conservation, wildlife, travel and environmental debates in Africa.
He has written a myriad articles on natural history and the environment and several books on travel and tourism in South Africa.
Contributing photographers Jéan du Plessis and Roger de la Harpe represent the finest of South Africa’s landscape, travel and wildlife lensmen. Both have garnered many awards for their work and have published several books in their own right.
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