Title: The Cape Town Book
Subtitle: A guide to the city's history, people and places
Author: Nechama Brodie
Genre: City Guide
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781920545987 / ISBN 978-1-920545-98-7
Softcover, 22 x 26 cm, 328 pages, 700 illustrations, 15 maps
Writing the The Cape Town Book: A guide to the city's history, people and places, Nechama Brodie found that more than 20 years after the formal end of apartheid in 1994, there are many who dislike being reminded of what came before. Others are still finding the words to talk about it. Other histories, still, are not being widely told. Perhaps history itself never really changes. But how we tell our histories can, and most certainly should, transform our experience of the past, otherwise the patina of time becomes a cosmetic veneer of nostalgia. The Cape Town Book approaches the history of the city in an unusual way: through space, as well as time. Each chapter explores a specific geography by looking at the individuals and communities that inhabited these spaces. This allows for many marginalised stories, the first people, slavery, the scale of forced removals, to be read as part of a whole. Although the book aims to be an inclusive history of Cape Town, for reasons of space some topics have been treated rather briefly. Where possible, the book directs the reader to specialised publications that offer insight into specific themes or events. In the nearly four years that the author worked on this project, she was fortunate to engage with a number of experts whose own work and research provided the foundation for this book's content. Their input allowed Nechama Brodie to understand Cape Town in entirely new ways.
Introduction: You Are Here
What Came Before
Who Came Before
The Cape of Good Hope
Foundations of the City
Table Valley and the City Bowl
The Two Rivers
Under the Devil's Peak
The Harbour and the Docklands
Robben Island
The Atlantic Seaboard
False Bay
The Northern Suburbs
Garden Suburbs and Forced Removal?
The Cape Flats
Cape Town: What Happens Next? Notes
Picture Credits Index
Acknowledgements