Understanding the Rural-Urban Dichotomy in Mositi Torontle’s The Victims and Unity Dow’s Far and Beyon’

This paper examines how place is represented in two Botswana novels, Far and Beyon’ by Unity Dow and The Victims by Mositi Torontle. Conventional notions of rural as the “authentic” experience that is threatened by moral breakdown in modern towns do not fit the experiences that these two novels describe. Instead, place reveals attitudes that influence identity formation, and it does so by foregrounding the importance of human relationships. Thus, the important point is to restore and maintain a person’s sense of belonging to a family and extended community, regardless of whether those communities are rural or urban. Breakdown threatens people when they do not know to whom they belong, regardless of where they live.