Made into a movie featuring some of South Africa's leading actors and released during the World Cup
>, won several awards. This is the coming-of-age story of a young man who leaves a rural village with his sister to go in search of their mother who has gone to the city to work. Eventually they find her, too sick to work, alone and in need of help. How Themba deals with his mother's illness, becomes a budding football star, then faces up to the fact that he too has been infected with HIV, is the story of this moving book which is aimed at teen readers.
About the author
Dr Lutz van Dijk is a German-Dutch writer, born in Berlin. He began as a teacher in Hamburg (Germany), later he joined the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam (Netherlands). Since 2001 he is at home in Cape Town (South Africa), where he became a founding member of HOKISA, a South African NGO (www.hokisa.co.za) which cares for children living with HIV/AIDS. Most of his books are written originally in German and translated into several other languages. Lutz van Dijk has received several literary awards, among them the Namibian Youth Literature Award (1997), the German Gustav-Heinemann-Peace-Award (2001) and an honorable Professorship of Poetry by the German University of Oldenburg (2009). His youth novel Stronger than the Storm became a South African bestseller and is used in many schools still today. His novel Themba has been made into an international movie (2010), since then also screened several times on South African TV channels and has received several international awards in Canada, France, USA, South Africa and Germany. In South Africa, Lutz van Dijk supports young literary talents. http://lutzvandijk.co.za/
