Die heelal op my tong

Willemien has had enough of her weight, of dreading cheese and dreading the shops. Huge on the outside, she feels free and wild within, and wants to know where her body’s terror began. Under the Richtersveld sun the two sisters haul a heavy safe in a supermarket trolley, meaning to tip it off a cliff, and on the long drive there Willemien opens up, confessing her past kilo by kilo. Their parents feared fat more than losing their land: a mother panicked by dairy and cellulite, a father who would not tolerate a flaw in the women of his house. He is a sly Afrikaans gangster who at times ran his businesses from prison while the FBI watched him in Palm Springs. Kidnappings, parties and a slimming cure on drugs carry the story from the Cape to California and Sri Lanka.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

South Africa

First published

2020 by Penguin Books

ISBN

9781485904106 (original)