Product Description
Agency: A Memoir of Remarkable Things
Author: Ashley Brownlee
Format: Paperback
Agency is a vivid, searching memoir of identity, belonging, and the long road to self-determination – at times side-splitting, at others gut wrenching.
Adopted at birth, a boy from ‘the Agency’ is placed into an oddball family in 1970s lower Claremont, where streets named after dead American Presidents frame a childhood lived in the harsh Kodachrome glow of Apartheid South Africa. Among suspicious home radio broadcasts, questionable judo masters, early morning swimming lanes and ballet classes, he grows up with a persistent sense of otherness.
When a helicopter crashes from the sky just metres away, and the murder of a beloved godfather shatters the illusion of safety, the questions begin: Who am I? Where do I belong?
Finally, in the stark landscapes of the Klein Karoo, he begins to re-assemble the puzzle of his life, piece by piece – absurd misadventures and hard reckonings, privilege and loss – simply to survive.
“Funny. Moving. Gripping. Testimony to the healing powers of the Klein Karoo.” — Sally Andrew, author of Recipes for Love and Murder
“A queer South African classic in the making. Agency is a triumph.” — Herman Lategan, author of Son of a Whore
About the Author
Born in Cape Town in 1971, Ashley Brownlee lives in the Klein Karoo. As Generation X, he came of age during South Africa’s transition to democracy, an experience that deeply informs his debut memoir, Agency. He holds a Performers Diploma in Speech and Drama from the University of Cape Town, but it’s his lifelong love of cinema – a student of the 1980s video store – that gives his writing it’s vivid, cinematic style. A passionate traveller, he has journeyed from the deserts of Tunisia and Jordan to the wilderness of North America, nurturing a fascination with landscape, story, and the extraordinary lives people lead.
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