Gustav Preller

Gustav Preller took up writing after a career with multinational corporations in Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Zurich, Hamburg, Cape Town, and Manchester, heading up companies in the fields of F.M.C.G., advertising, sports goods, and banking.

Outdoor passions include longboard surfing, mountain biking, and fishing. He holds the rank of 3rd Dan in JKA Shotokan karate and instructed for many years, drawing on this experience for his third novel, Last Train to Retreat.

He is married and lives in South Africa on Kwazulu-Natal's north coast.

Pretoria News called his debut novel, Icarus over Hong Kong (Pegasus UK paperback 2009, also Kindle), "A remarkable story of greed, lust, power, and failure in the world of high-stakes trading, casinos, and the Triads ... a superb suspense thriller." The Mercury said, "The protagonist's decline from a sexually dynamic corporate hero to desperate gambler, drug abuser, and target of the Triads is a modern morality tale as well as a white-knuckle flight towards oblivion."

His second novel, The Twelfth Delegate (Pegasus paperback 2011, also Kindle) was reviewed as follows in the Johannesburg Star: "Gustav Preller's first novel, Icarus over Hong Kong, placed him among South Africa's top crime writers. His second novel has placed this South African author more firmly among the ranks of the world's best crime writers."

Pretoria News called it 'crime fiction with a twist and a heart ... a story of hatred, deceit, love, discovery, sadness, and elation, moving across two continents and three countries. He has exceeded all expectations with his second delivery, The Twelfth Delegate."

Last Train to Retreat (Kindle, 2012) is set in South Africa's Cape Flats, a barren piece of earth forced upon the Coloured people by the previous apartheid government and today riven by gang warfare and drug trafficking. Courage and love in the face of evil is the theme of this novel.

In 2015 Gustav Preller won the international Proverse Prize for his entered manuscript Curveball: Life Never Comes at You Straight. Published by Proverse Hong Kong in 2016, the novel is about how the life of a conventional man going into what he thinks will be a conventional retirement is turned upside down.

Gone Little Cat, his first children's book, came out in 2020 and is now also available on Kindle. While the theme of deforestation is contemporary and relevant, the story is also about growing up, understanding that one doesn't have to be the same to be friends, and, through courage and resilience, finding one's self in a world that contains both good and bad. Told through the eyes of a cat, it is for early teens and also grownups who love animals.