Brief Hours and Weeks

My Life As a Capetonian

Emanuel Derman

Published on 1 March 2025

Brief Hours and Weeks is the first-person account of twenty-one years of childhood and youth in a small, tightly knit, first-generation Polish-Jewish immigrant community in Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. With vivid and candid personal stories, the author brings to life a time, place, culture, and set of mores that no longer exist. Brief Hours and Weeks will resonate with immigrants to the developed world anywhere, and perhaps with anyone who has to break treasured ties to start a new life in a distant different world.

Buy now (readers in the US and UK)

Outside of the US and UK, the book is widely available through independent bookstores as well as Amazon.com.