Casualties of Truth
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Book of the Little Axe, nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed 'Til the Well Runs Dry, a riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa
Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, D.C.; and the former glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son, Roland. When she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis’s new colleagues on a stormy summer evening filled with startling and unwelcome interruptions, Prudence has little reason to think that certain details of her history might arise sometime between cocktails and the appetizer course.
Yet when Davis’s colleague turns out to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence’s past, she is transported back to the formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state, and which fundamentally shaped her sense of righteousness and justice. Prudence experienced personal horrors in South Africa as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light. When Matshediso finally reveals the real reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her most deeply held beliefs and to excavate inner reserves of resilience and strength.
Lauren Francis-Sharma’s previous two novels have established her as a deft chronicler of history and its intersections with flawed humans struggling to find peace in unjust circumstances. With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Black woman's life is upended after she runs into a long-lost acquaintance in this messy outing from Francis-Sharma (The Book of the Little Axe). Prudence Wright lives in Washington, D.C., with her lawyer husband, Davis. When they go out to dinner with Matshediso Samuelsson, the new IT specialist at Davis's firm, it turns out that Matshediso and Prudence previously met when she was a law intern visiting South Africa from the U.S., and the present-day encounter stirs up painful memories for Prudence. In a parallel narrative set in 1996 Johannesburg, Prudence and Matshediso meet while attending the postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation hearings. She then calls him while in a jam at a gas station, where she can't pay for her fuel. Matshediso comes to her aid just as she fights off a white cop who's attempting to sexually assault her. Matshediso later tracks down the cop with Prudene in tow, and they slash his tires. Back in the present, Matshediso contacts Prudence against her wishes and makes a compromising demand, dredging up more details about what happened back in Johannesburg. The narrative is bracing but tonally unbalanced, veering haphazardly from a meditation on trauma to a high-stakes thriller. It's a mixed bag.
