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| Ten years after leaving the country of her birth and the place where her mother died, Eva returns to her dying father, a reckless hunter whose terrible secret Eva has kept since she was a child, and to Skinner’s Drift, the family farm on a rugged stretch of land where jackals and leopard still roam.
In this beautiful first novel, Lisa Fugard paints a haunting portrait of a family careering toward disaster. She vividly describes the isolation of Eva's rebellious and lonely English mother; the desperation of her Afrikaner father as drought destroys his farm; the conflicts among the black farm workers as the younger generation questions the loyalty and subservience of their elders; and the dangerous silence of a young girl who witnesses too much.
Like Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, Fugard has written a profoundly moving family drama, subtly set against the backdrop of a country in turmoil. She moves with extraordinary agility between intimate and revelatory domestic scenes and the fiercely challenging land. This is a powerful story from a stunning new writer. |
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| Read Chapter One |
