More Ants!

MORE ANTS! Is the sequel to the best-selling and hilarious, There are Ants in my Sugar. Set in South Africa, the first novel was a biographical romance-cum-intrigue, in which Annica, a city-slicker, was unceremoniously uprooted from her familiar life when her inventor husband lost the family fortune in a madcap scheme. Promised a tranquil, healthy life in the quiet countryside, she found she had been relocated to a rural hovel without running water or electricity, and the weeds covered the property too high to see over. Having had to say goodbye to her sophisticated city life in upmarket Johannesburg, Annica had to learn how to light a fire in the ancient Aga coal stove, or starve. Paraffin lamps and candles mask the sagging ceilings and cracked cement floors. Annica had to learn survival skills fast to make a home for her young daughter and aging husband. Living in the country is a culture shock... Most are still fighting the Anglo-Boer War of the 1900’s and haven’t yet forgiven the English. The eccentric neighbours of the first novel – Ben, the Jewish pig farmer, Joshua, the practising Sangoma (Shaman), the Indian Trading Store family – still maintain their vigorous presence, together with May, the indomitable Zulu maid. New and engaging characters appear; there’s the earthy and resourceful Liesbet, half-Portuguese/half-Zulu, running her small farm single-handedly, with one faithful retainer, a donkey and a cart. Apie, the retired Afrikaans farmer, initially comes across as a big racist, until we learn his secret. Together, these characters draw us deeper into the South Africa of the 60’s, and a 25-year old illegal love affair across the colour bar. The eccentric tiny community is now faced with a cultural problem of bewildering magnitude. But Annica has some troubles of her own and even resorts to the supernatural to rescue her ailing marriage. How they all resolve their particular crises is what leads to side-splitting comedy in this warm-hearted story of love.

More Ants!, the second hilarious story based on true events, can be read without knowing the first one entitled There are Ants in my Sugar. A quick summary of the latter in this edition, however, will quickly bring you up to date with events following the family being unceremoniously dumped in winter, practically in the middle of the night at their new “country home” (without running water or electricity). Having tried to make the best of a bad situation Annica and her close friend (also her ‘maid’) May, now run into brand new crises such discover a simmering forbidden love affair, for one, and murderous criminals, for another. Annica not only has to try and save her own ailing marriage by very unusual means that may involve the supernatural, she also has to try and rescue the roof of her hovel from complete disintegration as the notorious Transvaal storms – all while the husband is away. And yet another threat from within – her husband trying to take over her little business as his own business collapses – pushes our heroine of the veld even further towards the edge. The stakes couldn’t be higher as Ben, the Jewish pig farmer, not only openly expresses great concern towards her (which definitely goes beyond just good neighbourliness), he also gets involved in the husband’s business causing May to consistently warn of “groot kak” (big trouble) as all the various crises reach breaking point. The climax brings together a motley crew of characters (a white male racist, his ‘coloured’ (mulatto) sweetheart - who may still hate him for dumping her - a white gay interior decorator and his Indian lower, a ‘witchdoctor’, and an Afrikaans aunt, to name but a few). And let us not forget it is apartheid South Africa where race groups are forbidden by law to ‘associate’. And while they are chomping through life-saving rusks, milktart (custard flan) and koeksisters (Chinese bow ties) and washing it down with koffie (coffee) with the racist Apie and racially ‘reclassified’ Liesbet respectively, they almost forget to save their own lives. An increasingly desperate Annica now resorts to something few white women would do in the 1960s: she begs the help of a sangoma in her attempt to save everybody. How this will all play out is anybody’s guess – and it truly could go ‘either way’. But the sangoma’s revelations about Annica’s ‘ancestors’ are truly astounding and makes Annica sit up. But then the well-spoken, black missionary steps in and tries to bring calm and sanity to proceedings. Could he get them all to come to their senses as events seem to get crazier in this rural backwater of 1960s South Africa? Endearing, funny with lots of action and a sense of the mysterious the narrative is akin to the kind of Southern Writing in American fiction where characters are still driven by forces of the past, there is always some sort of race element that sets up potential conflicts, but then also reconciliation in the end. The characters are earthy, resourceful and find themselves outside their usual comfort zones.

Annica Foxcroft is a South African of Scottish descent, born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal province. Her home has been in Johannesburg for many years where she heads the marketing department of her communications and language training company Languageworks. Her life and work reflects an original, quirky approach, driven by a strong creative impulse and acute observation. Her prose conforms the ordinary into the unusual, and she consistently infuses everything with great humor, sensitivity and kindness. But a deep sense of irony marks all her great passages which means it is not just about humor, it is about the human condition also - after all comedy is serious business. Foxcroft has distinguished herself as a popular writer who gets people to laugh at themselves. Humor is often the best medicine for the zany situations her characters find themselves in. Her first book, There are Ants in my Sugar, sold out within days, and then went on to sell out several more times. As did the second book, More Ants!.The popularity of the first two books soon led to a third, Ants in the Big Onion. Collectively her books have sold over 35 000 copies. She is currently working on two more books in a similar vein as the previous 'trilogy'.