The Pickup tells the story of love between two different people and is about immigration and segregation in South Africa. The book was published in 2001 under Bloomsbury Press in the UK and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US. It is written by Nadine Gordimer, who is a white South-African woman.
The story begins with Julie Summers in the streets of South Africa. As she is driving on her own, her car abruptly fails and she is forced to look for help. She finds aid in the closes garage, where a young, colored man stands. Abdu, which is the man that helps her with her car, and Julie quickly form a connection though they need to stand up against several trials and tribulations, as Abdu is an illegal immigrant from an unnamed Arabic country.
Nadine Gordimer is was born in the early 1900’s and died in 2014 at the age of 90. She wrote several books about racial segregation, immigration and apartheid in South Africa, which is how she received a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. Her most notable works are July’s People and Burger’s Daughter.
