Trade Paperback, 222 x 146 mm, 272 pages RRP R145, ISBN 978-1-4152-0030-8 Publication date: March 2007, Category: Fiction Description From his Indian Ocean seat of exile Matthews peers back at his life and times, imagining his parents’ unlikely coupling in a dressing room of His Majesty’s Theatre in 1920s Johannesburg. Against overwhelming odds, his mother Nomvula brought him up concealed in his father Gustaf Frazier’s suburban backyard, for a while also home to Sterlington Buthelezi: prophet, trumpet repairman, herbalist, and Africa’s unsung aviation pioneer. The Second World War sweeps Matthews away from the contradictions of his birth, to North Africa and across the sea to Diego Suarez and back to Cape Town. Before he can return to the arms of his true love in Madagascar, the young ex-soldier has to escape the traps of his past, and once again is drawn into the world of the charismatic Sterlington, now plotting his triumphant final flight across the drought-stricken countryside of post-war Transkei and up into Africa to distribute a cargo of anti-colonial maps. Debut novelist Nicholas Ashby has carefully researched and lovingly written this intriguing weave of the forces of romance, religion and the grinding demise of empire … From Time Pips, page 263 Over decades spent contemplating the portrait propped up in his Diego Suarez sunroom, Matthews Marambara-Frazier was never quite able to come to any convincing understanding of Sterlington’s earthly finale. What symbolic purpose had the raining down of blood, bones and hard cattle-hooves upon a city hall and nearby pedestrians served, apart from causing injury and terror? As the wind blew across Diego’s rusted, sun-drenched roofs on the long hot afternoons of the last months of Matthews’ life – the warm gusts carrying the stench of countless dead fish up from the harbour and then on up into the hills where all memory of them and their time on this planet finally diluted – often a single-engine plane’s diminishing, long, melancholy drone would send Matthews off to sleep, his dreams fuelled by the opiates he sipped from a small brown medicine-bottle to relieve the agony of cankered lungs. To read on An original and intriguing historical novel. Warren Robertson, People A brilliant beginning and a likely winner at next year's literary awards. Jane Raphaely, Oprah Magazine Ashby is a gifted story-teller who has researched all his various milieus in great detail. Mike Oettle, Eastern Province Herald This is a gem of a book, evocative, well researched and at times bizarre. Helen Schlebusch, Citizen E-mail us a comment on this book. (Comments may be edited and used on this website.) To buy this book www.exclusivebooks.com www.kalahari.net home   writers   books   contact   buy   rights all content © Umuzi, Random House Struik this website designed and maintained by Guanaco.co.za