Up Against the Night
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
From Whitbread Novel Award-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Justin Cartwright comes an intimate exploration of one man's relationship with South Africa and its turbulent history
'Justin Cartwright is one of our best novelists' Telegraph
'Cartwright is as accomplished as anyone writing fiction today' Scotsman
'This is Cartwright at his best, delivering a strong story with skill and feeling' Mail on Sunday
'History . . . is seldom able to convey the essence of being human.'
Frank McAllister has become wealthy in England, where he has lived for thirty years. He has a house in Notting Hill, a house in the New Forest, and a house near Cape Town. But more and more he feels alienated in England. As the book opens, he is preparing to go to South Africa with his lover, Nellie. He is also waiting anxiously for his daughter, Lucinda, to arrive from California, where she has been in rehab.
Frank is a descendant of the Boer leader, Piet Retief, who was murdered by the Zulu king Dingane, along with all his followers, in 1838. He has been an icon of Afrikaners ever since.
Frank's Afrikaner cousin, Jaco, has become moderately famous on YouTube for having faced down a huge white shark. He is now in America, where he has joined the Scientologists. His chaotic and violent life spills over on to Frank. He is drawn into a world of violence and delusion that is to threaten the family.
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Justin Cartwright possesses that rarest of novelist's skills – the ability to create fiction which is intensely serious but which also vividly encompasses the absurdity and comedy of life. Up Against the Night is a subtle, brilliant novel about South Africa, its beautiful, superbly evoked landscape, its violent past and its uncertain present.
Justin Cartwright is a descendant of Piet Retief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cartwright (Lion Heart) writes a tale of one South African man that combines beauty, joy, and foreboding. Frank McAllister is a scion of the Retief family, whose most famous member, Piet, led a group of Boer settlers to their deaths at the hands of the Zulu king, Dingane, in 1838. Frank left South Africa behind to become a very successful businessman in London. Now he is making his annual return visit to his seaside vacation home on the Cape with his new love, Nellie Erikson; his daughter, Lucinda; and Nellie's son, Bertil. Frank is trying to keep away from his cousin, Jaco Retief, a drunken failure of a man with a violent temper. While Frank is surrounded by gorgeous scenery and his loving family, the reader also follows Jaco's ominous progress across the country as he purchases a gun and moves inexorably toward his cousin. Frank himself describes the land "as a kind of tapestry, intimately woven of beautiful landscapes and violent death." His love of Shakespeare contrasts sharply with Jaco's low vulgarity, but both lend this work an air of impending tragedy.