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Synopsis
"A dark and terrifying novel presenting a mythical account of the development of evil through the history of Southern Africa."--Seattle Times. This ferocious new novel by one of South Africa's visionary writers is a post-colonial reimagining of the Book of Revelation--an unholy epic that reenvisions the catastrophic violence of European "civilization" as a hooded rider who spreads slaughter across the African continent--a work that is as unnerving as it is intellectually provocative.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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About the Author
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1951, Mike Nicol is the author of several novels, among them Horseman, This Day and Age, and The Powers That Be, and many works of nonfiction, including A Good-Looking Corpse and The Waiting Country. He lives in Muizenberg, South Africa.
From Publishers Weekly
South African writer Nicol's third novel (after The Powers That Be) thunders along as it conjures up depraved and blackly fantastic images. In casting his story in the form of a grim parable, however, Nicol sacrifices character delineation to the symbolic representation of moral values. The protagonist is an unappealingly bitter, rifle-toting boy referred to as "the youth." He hardly speaks, and most of what he feels is expressed by his cocking and uncocking his ever-present gun. When his father is arrested for murder in a European village, the youth flees into the nearby forest, subsisting by raiding chicken coops in town. He soon falls in with a cynical forest-dweller, Madach, with whom, after a brief stop in a monastery run by a diabolical monk, he heads south by ship. On board, a prostitute handles the youth in a lusty manner; back on land, the people he meets are generally unfriendly, unless they are masking their true intentions. Nicol's prose is marvelously vivid, dark and arch, achieving at times an incantatory power through biblical cadence ("But at this time there came a band of Romanies..."). While the story it limns is mysterious and provocative, however, the novel fails to grasp the reader's heart; the characters are more symbol than flesh, and their trials too shadowy to be illuminating. Black-and-white illustrations by David Jackson.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherRandom House Value Publishing
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0517179601
- ISBN 13 9780517179604
- BindingHardcover
- Rating
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