Shortlisted: University of Johannesburg Literary Prize, Debut Category

Longlisted: Alan Paton Award, Stephen Leacock Humour Prize

Now Magazine Top Ten Books of 2007 List

“It may seem unbelievable, not to say wrong, that a comic memoir can emerge from South Africa’s white-power days. But after a reading of Richard Poplak’s breezy and brilliant Ja, No, Man, you’re more inclined to ask: what better place? No yes man could be this funny, or this wise.”

John Allemang, Globe and Mail

“A clever young Canadian-South African, Richard Poplak, has written one of the finest, funniest and most tragic memoirs I have read in years, called Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa. It is a gem, all the pleasure and pain and ruthless observation concealed inside the gleaming jewel of the book.”

Heather Mallick, CBC, Analysis and Viewpoint

“Powerful stories can make an impact even when they’re not that well written. But when devastating detail comes via vivid and passionate prose, then the punch to the solar plexus is that much heavier. Richard Poplak’s story of growing up white and, though it’s not probed too deeply, Jewish in South Africa is mesmerizing: nuanced, complex, appalling. Nothing is simple. So wholly shaped was Poplak by his upbringing that his first experiences in a Claude Watson classroom in Toronto, where black and Asian students happily mingle with whites, sends him into a paroxysm of panic. The genius of it is that the writer is able to both grab our sympathies and make us feel that, by dint of his status and colour, he got what he deserved.”

Brilliant.

NNNNN (Highest Rating) Now Magazine

“[R]eaders of Poplak’s darkly comic, zits-and-all memoir – tellingly subtitled Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa – will gather two unique insights from his book. First, apartheid wasn’t reviled only by those squirming beneath its oppressive thumb and by those in the global community looking in. Many privileged white South Africans despised it too. Second, despite living “under one of the vilest regimes in history,” with its sanctions and discrimination and all the rest, ordinary lives were successfully lived in suburbs by ordinary suburbanites doing everyday things. Ja, No, Man! – the title is one of many South Africanisms scattered throughout the book – places readers squarely where the author stood, seeing apartheid through his cynical but very smart eyes. It’s a screwy place well worth visiting.”

Toronto Star

“The author tackles issues with such veracity that you can see his Jo’burg home and its mighty boerboel leaping out at you. You can hear the vacuum cleaner screeching through the house as the domestic worker dodges the author’s pranks. You can smell the classroom where he learns how to be a good participant in the regime. You can feel the pain, the anxiety and the fear that what is supposed to be ideal, simply is not. Poplak has joined the fast-flowing current that is the South African narrative, and his perspective highlights that of so many, but really so few. Ja, no, man, this book deserves a read.”

The Witness

“[Poplak] depicts the realities of his life and those of the people around him with such wit and entertainment that the pages just flip themselves over. In Ja No Man, Poplak tells his life story – the way he experienced it. His portrayal of his family and friends will get you laughing, no matter where you are. That is how funny the book is… the book is a keeper and a comedy of note. It is the way for South Africans to look at the past and laugh out loud.

The Sowetan

“The strength of the book lies in the humour with which the stories are told and in particular in Poplak’s analyses of pop culture and its role in shaping his experiences of the world beyond Louis Botha Avenue.”

Sunday Times

“Poplak stitches together the insults and indignities - mundane, suburban, absurd, tragic - of apartheid in its horrible death throes with such skill, such honesty and above all, such drop-everything-and- laugh-out-loud humour that I found myself having to re-read whole passages just to see what they sounded like without my shrieks of laughter thrown in. Apartheid was a disgusting experiment but Poplak’s bottom’s up view shows how it was able to work for so long - the complicit agreement of so many to be so violent for so long. Ja, No, Man is an absolute must-read for anyone who was there, anyone who wants to know what it was like to be there and anyone who hopes we never go there there again - in other words, a must-read for everyone.”

Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight