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In this intimate memoir, Hannah Botsis chronicles life as a minister’s daughter in post-apartheid South Africa. Through the lens of her father’s forty-year ministry at a Presbyterian church in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, she explores faith, family, and racial privilege with unflinching honesty. A meditation on grace and belonging, this story illuminates how communities navigate change while wrestling with their complicated histories.
"An absolute delight." — John Maytham, Cape Talk host and author of Rapid Fire
"A wholesome, spiky, comforting, challenging and very funny memoir about the extraordinariness of the ordinary." — Helen Moffett, editor and author
"This family story resonates in its themes and its truths. A daughter seeks answers from her long-serving pastor father about God’s love in a time of apartheid. She finds answers in garlic polony in his childhood lunchboxes, in his single malts at day’s end, but mostly in asking from her heart." — Ufrieda Ho, journalist and author of Paper Sons and Daughters
“A Clergyman’s daughter is that rare find - a memoir that not only digs deep, but also interrogates; that asks questions and also answers them. An honest and highly evocative slice of life and South African history.” — A'Eysha Kassiem, journalist and author of Suitcase of Memory
Hannah Botsis is a lapsed academic, a mother, and a writer. A clergyman’s daughter, a white South African, and a Joburger. She holds a PhD in narrative psychology, from the University of the Witwatersrand, where she studied the language biographies of South African students. Her most recent book, Subjectivity, Language and the Postcolonial: Beyond Bourdieu in South Africa, was published by Routledge in 2018. She writes a weekly column about whatever she likes, for whoever likes it, offering down-to-earth insights into family life, social issues, and cultural critique, at hannahbotsis.substack.com