Quote by K. Sello Duiker: “To survive in this city, you must be willing to lose everything.”

Real survival — not just getting by, but making it through something harsh — sometimes means letting go of your assumptions, your safety, your old identity. The things you cling to most can be what keeps you trapped. Radical openness to loss can be the only path forward.

Duiker published Thirteen Cents in 2000, six years into South Africa's post-apartheid democracy. While the country had gained political freedom, many young Black South Africans remained trapped in poverty and violence, and the novel's unflinching portrait of street survival challenged celebratory narratives of the Rainbow Nation.

South African novelist whose debut Thirteen Cents depicted the brutal street life of Cape Town's homeless youth and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in 2001. His work was a landmark of post-apartheid South African fiction.