Die wêreld van Charlie Oeng

On Guy Fawkes night in 1964, Tian Kilian watched his parents die at the family farm during a fireworks show put on by the Cantonese Charlie Oeng. Long afterwards, feeling himself complicit, Tian sets out to rebuild that night and all that led to it, writing Oeng’s life alongside his own from what he reads and from journeys to the places Oeng passed through. Raised in Amsterdam, Oeng was pushed by misfortune, and killing, to Hong Kong, where an underground group he had known in Europe tracked him down; in the early 1960s he fled to South Africa, falling for a nameless beauty on the way, and fetched up in a small Karoo town. Its 36 chapters follow old Chinese ruses of war, and it keeps asking where one man’s guilt stops and another’s starts.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

560 pages in the original

Set in

South Africa, Netherlands

First published

2017 by Tafelberg

Author's age

63 when first published

ISBN

9780624080527 (original)