The Bungalow by Lynn Freed

An expatriate returns to apartheid South Africa, trying to decide if she should change her life

I really liked this. The narrator is almost completely unsympathetic, but also completely unsentimental and honest. The prose is vivid, without a wasted word. The surprising plot takes the reader competently in hand, with an unobtrusive backdrop the birth of the modern South African state.
But primarily this is a story about a woman who has to decide between her crazed homeland, her crazed family and her deadening life in the United States. There’s no phony or dead spots in this book.