Die ongelooflike onskuld van Dirkie Verwey

In Lyksovlakte, an invented hamlet in the dry northwest of the Cape near Pofadder and Pella, an empty motel stands one day on a farm and later vanishes without a trace. The account comes as a so-called documentary manuscript by Hermanus Verdomp, a lonely bachelor journalist who is hardly an impartial witness. He pieces events together from what he saw himself and from talks with locals, imagining the voices of others, while an editor's notes point out where his facts fail. People are seen living twice, as exact doubles; a young man is too shy to show up in photographs; a bush doctor, two librarians and a vain police sergeant fill the town. It is the early 1970s: the security police listen in, files go missing, and Vorster and his ministers tour the district.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

480 pages in the original

Set in

South Africa, 1970s

First published

2018 by Tafelberg

Author's age

60 when first published

ISBN

9780624084341 (original)