Beverley Naidoo

Beverley Naidoo FRSL is a South African author of children's books who lives in the UK. Her first three novels featured life in South Africa where she lived until her twenties. She has also written a biography of the trade unionist Neil Aggett.

The Other Side of Truth, published by Puffin in 2000, is a story about Nigerian political refugees in England. For that work she won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

Naidoo won the Josette Frank Award twice – in 1986 for Journey to Jo'burg and in 1997 for No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa.

Quotes

1.“Each morning the children had to pass the place of graves on their way to buy the day’s water and only last week another baby in the village had died. It was always scary seeing the little graves, but especially this fresh one now.”

2.“The children finally find their mother, but their troubles are not yet over. Things are not as simple as they thought they would be. They have to stay with their new friend for the night, then travel back with their mother the next day.”

3.“It isn’t until they reach the city that they come to understand the dangers of their country, and the painful struggle for freedom and dignity that is taking place all around them.”

4.A lie has seven winding paths, the truth one straight road.

5.Where the water rules, the land submits.

6"... allow bullies a stranglehold, they’ll have you by the throat!”