AGENCY, A memoir of remarkable things

305pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Southern Right Publishers, No place, 2026

ISBN: 9781048316384

A wise, compelling memoir of adoption, survival, loss, and the long journey to healing and self-discovery.

Ashley Brownlee was adopted at birth by an unconventional family in Cape Town, and grew up with a persistent sense of otherness, coming of age during the country's transition to democracy.

“History books give us the dates of apartheid and the AIDS crisis, but authenic oral histories give us the pulse. This book is an essential, visceral archive of what it meant to be queer, adopted, alive and nearly dead in South Africa during its most stormy decades ... A queer South African classic in the making. Agency is a triumph.” Herman Lategan, author of Son of a Whore

"If you want to know how to live through adoption, HIV Aids and cancer, and still retain your sense of humour and a bemused wonder at being alive in South Africa, read this book." James Whyle, author of We Two From Heaven

Ashley Brownlee was born in 1971 in Cape Town and lives in the Klein Karoo where he and his partner have owned an award-winning guesthouse, since 2006.

Ashley Brownlee was born in Cape Town in 1971.