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THE DANCING AND THE DEATH ON LEMON STREET
Fiction (Literary Anecdotes)
Jacana Media (South Africa) - August 2012
'An elegant bittersweet novel, which brilliantly recreates an entire world.' -- Hadrien Diez, Africabookclub.com
It is early 1960 in a leafy, peaceful suburb of Johannesburg, where Lemon Street residents lead orderly lives. Felicity Glanville, a young widow, believes she has finally met the new man of her life, the elegant Mr Van Aarden with his dove-grey Stetson. In a narrow room at the back of the garden, her maid Rosy impatiently awaits the arrival of her lover. Across the street, while his parents engage in yet another heated argument, a schoolboy dreams of a girl. And down past the willow trees at the bottom of the street this girl's mother prepares a party to celebrate her twentieth wedding anniversary, which will hardly turn out as she expected.
Meanwhile, tremors run through South Africa. Hundreds of men die in the great Clydesdale mine disaster. There is an assassination attempt upon the Prime Minister, Dr Verwoerd. There is the Sharpeville Massacre, which will radically shape the political climate of the country, and permanently alter the lives of certain people on Lemon Street. "Violence rendered things visible", writes Denis Hirson in this beautifully crafted, musical novel, which is as much about self-deception, control and the will to power as it about desire, loneliness and the desperate, blind need for revenge. -
WHITE SCARS
Non-Fiction (Essays) 196 pages
Jacana Media (South Africa) - August 25, 2006
A lyrical meditation on reading and its significance in our lives, focusing on four works that changed the author – books by Perec, Raymond Carver, and poet Breyten Breytenbach, as well as a book on the Sharpeville shootings.
'A richly intimate book that will be a hit with anyone who shares my personal fetish for that peculiarly intimate and revealing genre of writers writing about writing…A wonderfully inspiring text on the strange power of mourning and human loss.' -- Alex Dodd, Business Day
Biography
South African poet, actor and lecturer, now living in Paris. Author of a collection of poetry GARDENING IN THE DARK (SA: Jacana, France: Le Temps qu'il fait) as well as THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR TO AFRICA (SA: David Philip), and from Jacana: I REMEMBER KING KONG (THE BOXER), WE WALK STRAIGHT SO YOU BETTER GET OUT THE WAY and WHITE SCARS: On Reading and Rites of Passage - a lyrical meditation on reading and its significance in our lives, which was runner-up for the South African Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction Prize 2007.
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