Call It Dog

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Jo returns to South Africa after ten years in the UK to cover the riots sweeping the Jo'burg township of Alex. Nico, her estranged Afrikaner father, reappears and asks her to help prove his innocence in the murder of a black man, abducted by the security forces decades earlier. As they set off on a road trip through South Africa's now-unfamiliar landscape, it becomes clear that Nico knows more about the murder than he is letting on, and Jo begins to wonder whether she is his accomplice, or his captive.

Set against the backdrop of a country struggling to absorb its bloody history and forge a new democracy, Call It Dog asks whether justice and truth are more important than the bonds of loyalty and love, and explores what it is like to feel you no longer belong in the land of your birth - or to your own family.

Reviews

Tells a story that is disquieting and compelling, announcing an astute and unusually gifted observer... Roode's careful scrutiny of character and motivation that makes what could have been a well-worn tale of post-apartheid inheritance feel urgent and necessary... a skilfully executed debut. The tone is consistently one of taut, sombre reflectiveness, with indications in Roode's artfully worded descriptions of the range of this gifted young writer. * Guardian *
A remarkably assured first novel... Jo, a British-based journalist who returns to her native South Africa... makes a winning narrator, alternately blas and vulnerable * Sunday Times *
A gripping journey into the deceptions of family and nation, Roode's nightmare vision of a father's complicity in past crimes is a sharp and chilling debut from a writer of clear eye and bracing voice. -- Patrick Flanery
Marli Roode takes a roller-coaster ride through the new South Africa, where the old demons don't retire, they merely reload, and nothing is quite what it seems. Call It Dog calls it like it is - a blistering debut. -- Christopher Hope
[A] confident and daring debut novel * Independent on Sunday *

Author Bio

Marli Roode was born in South Africa in 1984 and moved to the UK when she was seventeen. After earning an MA in Philosophy and Literature, she worked as a freelance journalist in London before studying at Manchester University's Centre for New Writing. Marli won the 'Is There A Novelist In The House' competition at the Manchester Literature Festival in 2009 with an extract from Call It Dog. She lives in London.