Counting sleeping beauties - Hazel Frankel (First edition)

Hazel Frankel's breathtaking novel follows the story of a Jewish family living in Johannesburg in the 1950s. Through the voices of Hannah, the daughter of the house, her mother Susan, grandmother Leah and domestic worker Sina, Frankel explores the unravelling of this family. Frankel tells these various stories, of Leah in the shtetl in Lithuania, of Sina in her village outside Pietersburg, and of Hannah in a repressed Johannesburg suburb, with a compassionate narrative that is illuminating and jarring. Her use of Yiddish, Sotho and Afrikaans highlights both cultural and generational parallels and differences.