“‘At the Bottom of the Garden’ is a risky, strange, and mesmerizing story, taking the reader through a door that seems familiar, but that opens on to a world whose dimensions and meanings have been turned inside-out, magnified, and understood anew. Through prose that is both rich in detail and complex in meaning, Kathy Friedman shuttles us into the heart of an old South Africa where a child learns to recognize darkness in the most ordinary of places.” — 2012 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Jury (Alexander MacLeod, Johanna Skibsrud, and Madeleine Thien)