Chipo, the narrator of Meg Vandermerwe's debut novel, Zebra Crossing, stands out like a zebra among ponies, her pale skin and white hair marking her as freak and an oddity in her native Zimbabwe. To some, she is bad luck, the devil's vessel. To others, she's a potential talisman to be coveted, a collection of body parts worth thousands of dollars on the black market. When her beloved mother dies after a long illness, Chipo and her older brother, George, flee to South Africa in search of a new beginning. "Borders rhymes with orders," Chipo tells us, "A border is where you swap home for hope." The 2010 World Cup is rapidly approaching in Cape Town, bringing with it the world's attention and the excitement of a potential economic boom. Instead of a land of welcome and opportunity, however, Chipo and her brother are confronted with a hostile, challenging environment with little room for outsiders. No stranger to bigotry and abuse, Chipo finds herself embroiled in a shady business venture with a snake-oil salesman who exploits superstitious World Cup gamblers.
Zebra Crossing reminds readers that cities often present a very different face when the world is watching. As Chipo says, "Xenophobia is a long word. Complicated, arrogant. It thinks it is smarter than other words. It is a bully." Vandermerwe elegantly conjures the unpleasant underbelly of a familiar moment in recent history, while managing to avoid heavy-handed moralizing. Chipo amounts to more than her chances of redemption, and Zebra Crossing is a story for outsiders anywhere. --Emma Page, bookseller at Wellesley Books in Wellesley, Mass.