Raj Patel

Before the Soccer World Cup last year, I was asked to write a foreword to an anthology of life stories told by South African pavement dwellers, living on Symphony Way, near Cape Town. The stories blew me away.

In a house in a leafy Durban suburb, lightly festooned with Christmas decorations, a TV is playing the Adam Sandler movie 'Bedtime Stories'. Across scenes of gumballs falling from the sky and Roman gladiator races, our hero tries to get ahead through wish fulfilment.