Absolution

In this stunning literary debut, Patrick Flanery delivers a devastating and intimate portrait of post-apartheid South Africa, and the perils of taking sides when the sides are changing around you.
 
Told in shifting perspectives, Absolution is centred on the mysterious character of Clare Wald, a controversial writer of great fame, haunted by the memories of a sister she fears she betrayed to her death and a daughter she fears she abandoned. Clare comes to learn that in this conflict the dead do not stay buried, and the missing return in other forms--such as the small child present in her daughter's last days who has reappeared, posing as Clare's official biographer. Sam Leroux, a South African expatriate returning to Cape Town after many years in New York, gradually earns Clare's trust, his own ghosts emerging from the histories that he and Clare begin to unravel, leading them both along a path in search of reconciliation and forgiveness.

PATRICK FLANERY was born and raised in the USA. After earning a BFA in film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts he worked for 3 years in the film industry before moving to the UK, where he completed a doctorate in 20th-century English literature at the University of Oxford. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the publishing and adaptation history of Evelyn Waugh's novels. He has written for Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader's Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as publishing scholarly articles on British and South African literature and film in academic journals.