In 1996, Thordis Elva, an Icelandic teenager, was raped for two hours by Tom Stranger, her Australian boyfriend. Some years later they embarked on a journey of forgiveness, first by email and then by meeting up for a week in Cape Town. South of Forgiveness is a diary of the week the two spent together as they faced the offence and searched for forgiveness.
The most poignant moments are their visit to a rape crisis centre and to Robben Island, where their guide had been raped, as have one in five men in Cape Town, according to the authors (though rape statistics are not overly reliable). The authors themselves admit to some contextual incongruence in their personal search for forgiveness against such brutality of rape in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.
