A woman in post-apartheid South Africa confronts her family’s troubling past in this taut and daring novel about national trauma and collective guilt\u2014from the Booker Prize longlisted author of\u00a0<\/b>An Island<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Cape Town, 2028<\/span><\/i>. The land cracks from a years\u2019 long drought, queues form before water trucks, and the nearby mountains threaten to burn.<\/span><\/p>\n In her\u00a0crumbling corner of a public housing complex, Deidre van Deventer receives a call from the South African police. Her family home, recently reclaimed by the government, has become the scene of a criminal investigation. The remains of several bodies have just been unearthed from her\u00a0land, after decades underground. Detectives pepper\u00a0Deidre\u00a0with questions:\u00a0<\/span>Was your brother a member of a pro-apartheid group in the 1990s? Is it true that he was building bombs as part of a terrorist plot?\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Deirdre doesn\u2019t know the answers to\u00a0the detectives’\u00a0questions. All she knows\u00a0is that she was denied\u2014repeatedly\u2014the life she felt she deserved: overshadowed by her brother, then left behind by her daughter\u00a0after\u00a0she emigrated, Deidre must watch over her aging mother and make do with government help and the fading generosity of her neighbours\u00a0while the landscape around her grows more and more combustible.\u00a0As alarming evidence from the investigation continues to surface, and detectives pressure her to share what she knows of her family\u2019s disturbing past, Deidre must finally confront her own shattered memories so that something better might emerge\u00a0for her and her country.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A woman in post-apartheid South Africa confronts her family’s troubling past in this taut and daring novel about national trauma and collective guilt\u2014from the Booker Prize longlisted author of\u00a0<\/b>An Island<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Cape Town, 2028<\/span><\/i>. The land cracks from a years\u2019 long drought, queues form before water trucks, and the nearby mountains threaten to burn.<\/span><\/p>\n In her\u00a0crumbling corner of a public housing complex, Deidre van Deventer receives a call from the South African police. Her family home, recently reclaimed by the government, has become the scene of a criminal investigation. The remains of several bodies have just been unearthed from her\u00a0land, after decades underground. Detectives pepper\u00a0Deidre\u00a0with questions:\u00a0<\/span>Was your brother a member of a pro-apartheid group in the 1990s? Is it true that he was building bombs as part of a terrorist plot?\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Deirdre doesn\u2019t know the answers to\u00a0the detectives’\u00a0questions. All she knows\u00a0is that she was denied\u2014repeatedly\u2014the life she felt she deserved: overshadowed by her brother, then left behind by her daughter\u00a0after\u00a0she emigrated, Deidre must watch over her aging mother and make do with government help and the fading generosity of her neighbours\u00a0while the landscape around her grows more and more combustible.\u00a0As alarming evidence from the investigation continues to surface, and detectives pressure her to share what she knows of her family\u2019s disturbing past, Deidre must finally confront her own shattered memories so that something better might emerge\u00a0for her and her country.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"retailer":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[347],"product_tag":[141,109,203,330,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-564","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-literary-fiction","7":"product_tag-karen-jennings","8":"product_tag-literary-fiction","9":"product_tag-politics","10":"product_tag-psychological","11":"product_tag-south-africa","12":"thb-post-share-style1","14":"first","15":"instock","16":"taxable","17":"shipping-taxable","18":"purchasable","19":"product-type-variable"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n