A love letter to Durban, all its flaws

PROLIFIC author, Elana Bregin, is launching a new novel, Station Life Repair, which focuses on the intersection of lives and events, choices and circumstances of a series of characters living and working in Durban.

- ILLA THOMPSON

Bregin will be in conversation with Lliane Loots, lecturer, commentator, academic and director of Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience and Flatfoot Dance Company, at Ike's Books in Greyville on July 29 at 6pm.

One seldom reads a book, deeply rooted in a contemporary Durban which is cognisant of this city’s multilayered complexities. Station Life Repair is a love letter to all that is joyful about the city, while not hiding the darkness in the shadows. The story has an array of well-developed characters covering the spectrum of people you find in Durban ~ a wise, heroic, engaging black therapist; a white woman trying to craft authentic life choices; passionate African foreign nationals trying to assimilate themselves into inner-city life and contribute meaningfully to their adopted home; an eccentric but empathic Indian vendor at the morning market; a feisty and outspoken older woman living with deep scars and rage; and a grumpy, harassed but bighearted single parent with his own demons to purge.