Trade Paperback, 222 x 146 mm, 208 pages RRP R130, ISBN 978-1-4152-0027-8 Publication date: April 2007, Category: Fiction “Troost will be one of the last men standing when it comes to writers of whatever hue.” – Jane Rosenthal, Mail & Guardian Description Heinrich Troost’s tantalising début novel about love and loss in our time springs a big surprise towards the end, but it is also startling on other counts, especially its cool jazzy engagement with the habitually tedious environment of Pretoria, eventually opening to unsuspected depths. When Harry van As returns to work in Pretoria, the city of his childhood, he seems to be at sea in a vastly changed hinterland of shifting surfaces. Gone is, for example, the white middle-class respectability. Instead of an apartheid stronghold, he finds a pulsating African metropolis. Or is it just the company he keeps – a rainbow spectrum of friends and colleagues of origins and persuasions that would have been anathema in the stifling city of his youth. Harry goes about his business – and an equal amount of pleasure – but gets no firm purchase on his life. What is he doing here? How did he come to be here? He rekindles a relationship with an old varsity flame, but his thoughts keep returning to the Cape and another love, as well as to a horrible accident, and the loss of his children. As the novel progresses, a meeting with a sculptor in the medium of glass begins to bring Harry’s diffuse state of being into focus. And after an enchanted day at the bottom of the Tswaing meteor crater Harry dramatically finds the door through which to enter into his true existence. A stylish piece of contemporary South African fiction, Plot Loss exposes the mind of a South African and an Afrikaner in a critical and nuanced way, with an authentic slice of South African humour. From Plot Loss, page 30 No one answers when he presses number 42. He decides to phone, but the number is only taking a message. ‘Hi, this is Johnson. My phone is not available now. Leave a message and I will get back to you. Love you. Bye.’ He presses the flat’s number again, long and hard, and hears a woman’s voice. She is still talking when Johnson appears like a prisoner in Oz from behind the security bars. The flat is sparsely decorated. The floors are tiled with nothing to soften them but three or four ethnic pots. A coffee table with a glass top, a wall unit and a gommagomma suite are the only pieces of furniture in the lounge. The walls are bare. Johnson introduces him to Batsi, a woman with a big ass in tight jeans and a friendly, sensitive smile. She is a civil servant and a Venda. Johnson is acting the terminally spoilt boy. He calls her Mama and gives her hugs so affectionate that you have to doubt if they are really lovers. ‘You make the food,Mama?’ Johnson asks.‘What you make for us?’ It is fish with rice. ‘That’s good, Mama, you can bring it just now.’ Batsi sinks into a gommagomma chair, reading a book, A Year in Provence. It is not for her to take part in men’s talk. To read on I didn't think it was possible, but cult fiction is growing in South Africa, and here is a master. Sheana Campbell, Citizen I like this book for its energy and cleverness. I also liked it for its distinct 'South Africanness' which escapes the parochial. Sharon Dell, Witness Picking up a debut novel like Plot Loss, from one's own country and about one's own country, compels one to say, Well done! Stoffel Cilliers, Volksblad 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