Betrayal
By (Author) Adriaan Van Dis
Translated by Ina Rilke
Quercus Publishing
MacLehose Press
1st August 2013
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
839.3137
Short-listed for Libris Literatuur Prijs 2011
Hardback
272
Width 164mm, Height 222mm, Spine 21mm
358g
Mulder, a Dutchman, returns at last to South Africa, his memories scattered by forty years and two strokes.
Once he fought to free the country from apartheid; now he finds its people asking whether years of democracy have left them any better off. The village where his friend Donald - a comrade from his Fraternite days - lives is as segregated as ever: fishermen struggle to eke out a living and kids wreck their brains with crystal meth. Tensions are high: Donald wages a campaign against the local mayor; every day the whites add inches to their perimeter fences. So when Mulder and Donald attempt to help a young tik-head get clean against his will, their muddled good intentions can only be misunderstood...'A terrific books' Toef Jaeger, Onze Wereld. * Onze Wereld *
'His best novel to date' Frank van Dijl, De Tijd. * De Tijd *
'Hugely compelling' Jeroen Vullings, Vrij Nederland. * Vrij Nederland *
'More vivid, more profound and more humorous than could ever be captured in a thousand-word review. Adriaan van Dis's prose is scintillating' NRC Handelsblad. * NRC Handelsblad *
Adriaan Van Dis is a Dutch author with roots in what was the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). As a young man he studied Afrikaans at Amsterdam University. His novel My Father's War won a number of awards in the Netherlands and was translated into English by Ina Rilke.