Who Killed Piet Barol?
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Cape Town, 1914. Where a person can be whoever they want to be . . .
Former tutor Piet Barol and singer Stacey Meadows are making a splash in colonial Cape Town. Styling themselves as the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Barol, they have been living by their wits - but as the world drifts towards war, their quest for comfort and riches has brought them close to bankruptcy. With creditors at their heels, their furniture business is imploding and only a major win will save them.
Stacey finds the ideal stooge: a mining magnate with a mansion to furnish. Piet enlists two Xhosa men to lead him into the magical forest of Gwadana, in search of a fabled tree. He needs precious wood, but he doesn't want to pay for it.
The Natives Land Act has just abolished property rights for the majority of black South Africans, and whole families have been ripped apart. As Piet's charm, charisma and appetite for risk lead him far beyond the safety of the privileged white world, he does not comprehend the enormous price of the lies he has told, nor where they will lead him . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In an ambitious tale of colonial greed set in South Africa in the first days of World War I, Mason reprises Piet Barol, the handsome, charismatic scoundrel who anchored his previous novel, History of a Pleasure Seeker. The Dutch Barol, an ersatz French vicomte and talented furniture designer living on the thinnest of margins, and his American wife, Stacey, who has secrets of her own, seek to make their fortune turning out exquisite pieces for the nouveau riche in Cape Town. Barol, assisted by the young Xhosa men Ntsina Zini and Luvo Yako, who consider Barol and the other whites the Strange Ones, treks deep into the Xhosa homeland to harvest the revered Ancestor Trees near Gwadana, Ntsina's village. Barol's isolation and his growing obsession with the trees take a toll on his relationship with his wife and son. Ntsina also has dreams for the future, including marriage to the beautiful young Gwandan Bela, though a confrontation between Ntsina and his witch doctor grandmother and his violent father threatens to destroy the family. With echoes of Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast, Mason unspools a story rich in detail and populated with deeply flawed characters whose lives intersect in the once-pristine forest that inspires acts sacred and profane. Mason handles multiple story lines with the lan of a seasoned raconteur.
Customer Reviews
This novel will capture your heart.
Then break it.