Read as a kind of travelogue penned by a terminally ill immigrant, Another Country’s dominant themes, which grow increasingly complex throughout the course of the novel, include social class and patient alterity (or ‘otherness’). Interesting context for the novel, of which Schoeman was probably not unaware, is British writer Anthony Trollope’s travelogue, South Africa: The Transvaal. Griqualand West. The Orange Free State. Native Territories (1878), in which Trollope writes: “Bloemfontein is becoming another Madeira, another Algiers, another Egypt, in regards to English sufferers with weak chests and imperfect lungs”—and with a sardonic jab, adds: “It seems to the ignorant as though the doctors were ever seeking an increased distance that relief for their patients which they cannot find in increased skill” (Trollope 260). Indeed, Trollope’s observations of Bloemfontein’s sanitarium life closely mirror its depiction in the novel.   Schoeman’s novel magnifies breakdowns of social class hierarchy through the lens of human illness. Tuberculosis, as it functions in the novel, is not only a disease that isolates and ‘others’ its victims, but an insidious biological force that sometimes bolsters or undermines class distinction. For example, upon arriving to the town, Versluis, relapsed, unconscious, and on the verge of death, is brought to a local hotel. Recovering, he observes that the quality of care he receives, previously cold and perfunctory, improves after unpacking his belongings: “[I]t was […] the ivory brushes and toilet bottles with the silver tops on the chest of drawers that has evoked this increasing friendliness […] he had revealed himself as a traveler with a pigskin toilet case and little flasks with silver tops, as a man who these could give orders and pay for whatever he consumed” (Schoeman 9, 12). Versluis must display these small tokens of wealth to impart that he is not a man without means who has arrived to die at others’ expense in an alien land.   Class hierarchy is destabilized when another tuberculosis-ailing Dutchman, Gelmers, arrives to Bloemfontein. Versluis takes instant antipathy to his fellow countryman, who is of an obviously lower social class: “[Gelmers’s] palm was hot and sweaty and grip slack, his voice high-pitched, nasal and slightly breathless. […] It was more probably the cheap, loud suit that irritated him…” (101, 103). Other subtle passages denote the stark difference in class—Schoeman embroils his Dutch characters in awkward sartorial tension—Gelmers always in “heavy shoes […] his thick-soled boots thud[ing] across the floorboards”, whereas Versluis dons “narrow, shiny evening shoes” (166, 167, 277). Rather than taking hold of their commonality, finding reciprocity in their mutual suffering and memory of their homeland, the men remain entrenched class opponents. No matter their respective social status, however, both men are viewed as alien invalids in the eyes of the Bloemfontein community, subject to the inexorable progress of illness.