Little Karoo

by Pauline Smith

Published December 1925

First published in 1925, Pauline Smith's beautiful collection of stories set in the South Africa of her childhood is a lyrical and moving look at growing up in a remote landscape. Smith captures life in the heart of the Little Karoo, a mostly uninhabited terrain, where rain may not fall for years at a time. Poor, white early-Afrikaner settlers beset by hard times and an unforgiving landscape, the characters in her stories overcome tragedy time and time again, refusing to be broken.