The Shouting in the Dark

Late at night Ella watches her elderly father on the veranda, raging at the South African night sky. Caught between her mother's longing for her lost Dutch home, and her father's shattering wartime experiences in the Indian Ocean, Ella fights hard to understand where she fits into their lives and how to belong in a divided country. Her one secret joy is her growing love for the African gardener, Phineas. Years later, seeking political refuge in Europe, Ella discovers her father never registered her birth. Now she must confront her father's ghosts, and create a future for herself.

The Shouting in the Dark is Ella's story of surviving childhood and mapping new belonging. This Australian edition includes a new preface by the author, an interview that sets the book in relation to other stories of migration in the south, and selected writing by Elleke Boehmer about living in, navigating, and gravitating back to the southern hemisphere.