Shepherds & Butchers

Leon Labuschagne’s livelihood depends on death. At

nineteen, he is a warder on Death Row: a shepherd who

cares for the condemned – and a butcher who escorts them

to the gallows. After a gruelling two-week stint in which

thirty-two men were hanged, Leon loses control, with tragic

results. And now he’s the one facing the death penalty.

Only the most precarious line of legal argument stands

between Leon and the gallows. Chasing a defence, his

advocate trawls the deepest recesses of life in the Pot – the

twilight world of Death Row.

A gripping courtroom drama steeped in the factual,

Shepherds & Butchers begins in 1987, a year in which 164

people were executed. Two years later, the last man went

to the gallows in Pretoria, after more than four thousand

hangings that century. This novel portrays legal execution

in unprecedented detail, revealing its devastating impact on

all those involved.