“I've been craving the road for some time,” writes Justin Fox — odd words for this most seasoned of travel writers. But there is more to it: “Restless, anxious about an uneventful slide into my late 30s …” And thus begins ten thousand kilometres around the edge of the Republic. Hugging the comforts which distance offers agitated souls, he bears east from Cape Town. This is fatherland, and for Justin his father’s land, which the famous architect Revel Fox has marked as much as he had shaped his son’s own identity. Justin tarries at outposts and towns; he skips entire cities to favour the off-beat treasures of characters fashioned less by convention than by their own battles against nature or circumstance. Back home his dad is fighting cancer. Having travelled with acute observation he reports like a novelist, stringing together scenes, pictures, communities and characters to form a totality of what South Africa is today as seen from its margins: a sad, exciting clash of histories and stories.
