Stealing Water

Funny, never self-pitying and a pleasure to read * Guardian *
There are belly laughs enough, and some serious criminality to boot, but Ecott's outstanding talent as an author is for pathos. [It] moved me more than once to tears. As an author, Dickens is the comparison * Matthew Parris, The Times *
Engrossing [. . .] it's a love story without romance, or redemption, or a tidy resolution; and all the finer for it * Mail on Sunday *
The narrative crackles and fizzles along * Irish Times *
An extraordinary account of childhood in a baroque South Africa. Unputdownable - never sentimental, extremely honest and with a positively Dickensian cast of characters * Emma Thompson *
The greatest memoir to come out of white Africa since Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart - it reads like Angela's Ashes rewritten by Nick Hornby under a baking Johannesburg sun . . . told with warmth, humanity and humour to burn * Tony Parsons *
A truthful story brilliantly told - both funny and moving. I often had to lay the book aside to recover from laughter . . . Tim Ecott cleverly captures the feeling of an extraordinary life * Lynne Reid Banks *
Tim Ecott's story of growing up in Ireland and Africa is both haunting and funny. He writes with compassion and honesty to give us a truly memorable account of an extraordinary upbringing * Fergal Keane *
STEALING WATER is a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of poor-white family life in the twilight of apartheid * Richard E. Grant *
Excellent * Metro *