The Assassin: A Story of Race and Rage in the Land of Apartheid

On September 6, 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas entered South Africa's parliament, gripping a wickedly long knife, and stabbed Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd four times in the chest. This chilling study of the life of Tsafendas―the homeless, stateless, and loveless illegitimate son of a Greek father and a black African mother―gives us acrystalline vision of the tragic consequences of apartheid.

Henk Van Woerden, a prize-winning author, was born in the Netherlands in 1947. He moved to South Africa as a child, studied fine art at the University of Cape Town, and in 1968 returned to Amsterdam, where he lives today. The Assassin has been nominated for two major Dutch awards and translated into five languages.