Michiel Heyns Libros

Deals with Coetzee's origins, early years, and first writings. This book corrects many of the misconceptions about Coetzee, and that illuminates the genesis and implications of his novels. It is suitable for everybody concerned with Coetzee's life and work.

Set in apartheid South Africa, Agaat portrays the unique relationship between Milla, a 67-year-old white woman, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat. Through flashbacks and diary entries, the reader learns about Milla's past. Life for white farmers in 1950s South Africa was full of promise — young and newly married, Milla raised a son and created her own farm out of a swathe of Cape mountainside. Forty years later her family has fallen apart, the country she knew is on the brink of huge change, and all she has left are memories and her proud, contrary, yet affectionate guardian. With haunting, lyrical prose, Marlene Van Niekerk creates a story of love and family loyalty. Winner of the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2007, Agaat was translated as The Way of the Women by Michiel Heyns, who received the Sol Plaatje Award for his translation.

Irreverent, satirical, and uninhibited, The Reluctant Passenger is a hugely entertaining and intelligent comic novel set in contemporary Cape Town. Nicholas Morris is a fundamentally decent chap who likes order and isn't given to messy emotions. He and his sort-of girlfriend Leonora share a relationship that is comforting in its sameness, and he is ensconced in a well-paid career as an environmental lawyer. When he takes on a case to save the baboons of Cape Point from developers, he becomes drawn into intrigues involving a charismatic liberal judge, dinosaurs from the old regime, and the full cast of the wealthy Tomlinson family, not to mention its golden boy heir. The rainbow nation begins to unravel in a hilarious riot of traffic chaos, ecological mayhem (including a troop of baboons rampaging through a shopping mall), and sexual discovery.

Bundu is about the people and the animals of Africa in the heights of their beauty and the depths of their despair. It is a love story and a meditation on the mystery of our powers and the limitations that we share with our brothers, the animals. An unforgettable African story written by a giant of Afrikaan literature.