LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE

What does it mean to grow up with an African mother and European father in racially segregated 1950s Rhodesia?

For Maud Blair it meant being sent, aged four, to a ‘Coloured’ boarding school run by Christian nuns. It meant being taught in English rather than her native language, which she was encouraged to forget. It meant only seeing her family for two weeks during the school’s Christmas holiday, where Maud longed for the sense of belonging she once had.

Labelled as neither African nor European, Maud tries to make sense of her mixed identity in the midst of political unrest and de facto apartheid, taking her to England via South Africa and back to post-independence Zimbabwe. The result is a strikingly original memoir that confronts privilege, prejudice and the place we call home.

'Significant in its detail' Beverley Naidoo, author of Journey to Jo’burg

'Important and powerful’ Natalie Evans, author of The Mixed-Race Experience

'An unremitting search for identity' Florence Olajide, author of Coconut

'Lucid, flowing and warm' Ibbo Mandaza, Director of the SAPES Trust

'Immensely enjoyable' Professor Iram Siraj, University of Oxford

Maud Blair was born to a Zimbabwean mother and an English father and spent her childhood in Zimbabwe. She attended the University College of Rhodesia before moving to the UK, where she completed a Master’s degree in ‘Race and Ethnicity’ at the University of Warwick followed by a PhD in the Sociology of Education at the Open University. There she worked for twelve years leading courses in Race and Education and Gender and Education. She then worked as a civil servant in the Department of Education and as a consultant for The Learning Trust in Hackney before she retired. Maud has three children and eight grandchildren and lives in Cambridge.