Description
Spud: Learning to Fly by John van de Ruit is the third book in the popular Spud series, following sixteen-year-old John “Spud” Milton through his third year at an elite boys’ boarding school in KwaZulu-Natal. It is 1992, and while South Africa is undergoing dramatic political change, Spud is more immediately concerned with surviving his senior year, his increasingly complicated relationships with girls, and the eccentric collection of friends and enemies who surround him.
Spud finds himself sharing a dormitory with a new Malawian boy, dealing with his vindictive arch-enemy and attempting to make sense of Shakespeare, religion and the meaning of life. As always, his experiences are recorded in his diary, giving the novel its distinctive mix of adolescent embarrassment, schoolboy mischief and sharp humour. The result is a distinctly South African coming-of-age story that captures the absurdities and uncertainties of teenage life against the backdrop of a country in transition.
