Empire Settings - Hardcover

Schmahmann, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1893996166 ISBN 13: 9781893996168

Publisher: White Pine Press, 2001

Synopsis

Danny Divan is a white teenager in South Africa under apartheid when he falls in love with the daughter of a black domestic servant. His family forces the two apart, and eventually his discomfort with the poisonous political atmosphere drives him from the country and to a new life in America.

Within weeks of his arrival in Boston, Danny meets Tesseba, an offbeat but trusting artist who takes him in and marries him so he won’t be deported. Even as they live as a couple and build a life together, and as Danny prospers and his family joins him in exile, the memory of his forbidden first love does not fade. Twenty years later, when Danny returns to the "new" South Africa to salvage what he can of his family’s fortune, he sets out to discover what became of the girl he cannot forget. What he finds instead is the truest version of himself.

This novel traces the ambiguities of love within a family and for another, and tests the shakiness of memory. Empire Settings reveals how love, and the memory of love, can be overwhelmed by changing assumptions about race and belonging.

David Schmahmann was born in Durban, South Africa, and is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Cornell Law School. He has also studied in India and Israel, and his publications include a short story in The Yale Review and articles on legal issues. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts and practices law in Boston. This is his first novel.

The book has been optioned for a film by noted producer Danny Wilson.

About this title

About the Author:

David Schmahmann was born in Durban, South Africa. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Cornell Law School and has studied in India and Israel and worked in Burma. Part of Empire Settings appeared as a short story in The Yale Review (and received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XIV), and the author has also published articles and chapters on a variety of legal issues. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and practices law in Boston.

From Publishers Weekly:

An engaging and poignant account of forbidden love between a privileged 17-year-old white boy and the daughter of a Zulu servant woman under apartheid in 1970s Durban, South Africa marks the literary debut of a Durban-born, but Dartmouth- and Cornell-educated Boston attorney. Fleeing retribution for his taboo relationship and possible reprisal for his mother's liberal political celebrity in 1978, Danny Divin arrives in Boston and marries an impetuous, caring young artist to avoid deportation. Although the marriage bond deepens over the years, Danny cannot shake the bittersweet memory of his first love. Narrated in sequential chapters (with flashbacks) in the voices of Danny, his mother, his sister, the servant, the girl and Danny again, the novel opens 20 years after Danny's arrival in Boston. Danny's mother and her second husband, a once-wealthy entrepreneur whose fortune has diminished in the corrupt South African economy, fly to Boston to persuade Danny to return to Durban to orchestrate the highly illegal transfer of the family's holdings to avoid seizure by the treacherous government. Seduced by the possibility of seeing his former lover again, Danny finally agrees, against his better judgment. The final chapter returns to Danny's voice and time present, recounting his perilous journey home to attempt to save the family fortune and recapture his dream of youthful romance. Between his attempt to accomplish his precarious mission and avoid imprisonment by the government, his quest to find his lost love and his strained fidelity to his wife, a fine edge of suspense is generated. An altogether promising debut. Agent, Peter Matson, Sterling Lord Literistic. 20,000 first printing; $75,000 advertising budget; 8-city author tour; film option to producers of The Handmaid's Tale.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: White Pine Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1893996166
• ISBN 13: 9781893996168
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328