A story at once deeply personal and edifyingly public. Ways of Staying is one man’s journey into the heart of a country that remains riven and undefined. From the murder of the author’s cousin in 2006 to the hills of Zululand mere weeks after the fatal shooting of historian David Rattray, from the critical ruling party showdown at Polokwane in 2007 to the xenophobic attacks of winter 2008, this is a book that ventures far beneath the headlines and into the very marrow of a strange and troubled land.

And yet it is in these dark places where few dare to look that Kevin Bloom meets men and women who believe that South Africa’s history can be overcome, men and women who are engaged in the act of imagining some kinder future.

At times brutal and raw, at times tender and compassionate, Ways of Staying is in the final analysis a love letter to a country that will not be forsaken.

This is not only the story of why we stay and how, its the story of who we are.