Sarah's Story is a prize-winning, controversial novel set during three decades, 1961-1986. Sarah Khumalo is a farm worker, who works all her life for the Crewe family on a small holding in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Her family story is the story of the Poqo uprisings, forced removals, small town consumer boycotts, change and murder. Her life is a thread which joins the lives in this community. The novel is an unflinching look at the bitter apartheid years. The novel won the 1996 Bertram's Literature of Africa Award, under the title Close Up.