by Damon Galgut
First published 2009
Adam retreats to a deserted house on the outskirts of town after losing both his job and his home in the city. He seeks nothing more than quiet recovery from his recent failures. His solitude breaks when Canning appears, a figure Adam remembers dimly from childhood but hardly knows. Canning has married a mysterious and striking woman, and together they pull Adam into their orbit. Canning's inheritance includes not just wealth but an elaborate architectural folly built in the veld, a strange and captivating structure that becomes the center of their interactions. As Adam spends time at this peculiar estate, he finds himself changing in ways he neither expects nor controls. The transformation proves violent and complete. Around them, South Africa itself undergoes its own upheavals, creating a backdrop where racial tensions simmer and old certainties crumble. Adam discovers that recovery requires more than retreat from the world. In this suffocating landscape where desire and violence intersect, he must confront not only his relationship with Canning and the secrets that bind them, but also his own capacity for moral compromise in a society where the rules keep shifting.
Genres: fiction, african-literature, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-transformation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: South Africa, Veld
Period: Contemporary
256 pages · Hardcover · McClelland & Stewart