Reviewer:
Leslie London
Book Review Type:
Standard Book Review
Joline Young’s new book, “An uncomfortable paradise” takes us on a journey, part personal, part historical, and a South African history that few know of – early colonial life in Simons Town. Modern day Simon’s Town is a tourist hub in which South Africa’s naval base provides a quaint, if slightly militaristic, backdrop to charming coffee shops, pleasant bed and breakfast establishments, design emporia, emblematic vistas of sea and mountains, a penguin colony and multiple iconic colonial memorials, not least the fetishised statue of a naval dog. But the true history of the area, like almost all of South Africa, long precedes British or Dutch appropriation…