The Wild Almond Line

An autobiographical account of apartheid-era South Africa from the perspective of a young man of East European Jewish descent. A reluctant conscript, Larry Schwartz had intended to flee, instead he found himself on a troop train headed for a camp outside Pretoria to serve in the apartheid army. "The Wild Almond Line" alternates between military misadventure and a generational saga in which Larry traces his family through migration from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century, through to its experience of a divided country. The book explores the relationship between Jew and Afrikaner, apartheid, Holocaust, memory, dispossession and personal and community responsibility.