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THE ROCK ALPHABET
Fiction (Literary Fiction) 191 pages
Kwela Books (SA) - January 9, 2004
An evocative novel exploring loss, memory and reclamation through the stories of Ivy and Flin, whose paths cross in Ivy’s quest for missing rock artefacts. When Flin is only a few years old, he and his older brother are discovered wandering in a remote mountain range by Beattie Faro, daughter of a renowned archaeologist. Beattie brings the children home, but the silent older boy runs away to the mountain and fatefully, Beattie follows and also disappears.
Fifteen years later Ivy works at the Faro Institute, sorting the archaeological collection. Boring work, till a lawyer arrives to announce that the Institute is closing – and to accuse Ivy of theft. Desperate to track down missing artefacts at the old Faro house, Ivy finds it deserted and she and a friend move in. But Flin has also returned to the neighbourhood and secretly watches the girls as they transform what was once his home. Haunted by his own demons, he must to build up the courage to return to the scene of his greatest loss: the mountain, and Ivy is the one who can help him...
Biography
Prize-winning author with degrees in archaeology and biology, and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She has worked in publishing, journalism and as a TV scriptwriter. Also the author of SHARK'S EGG, an accomplished debut, about love, friendship and betrayal, written in spare, penetrating prose 128pp. (SA: Kwela 2000). In 2006 she spent some time working on her new novel on the Schloss Solitude programme in Stuttgart, Germany. She is the winner of the 2008 Caine Prize for African writing.
'Henrietta Rose-Innes writes an admirably taut clean prose.' J M Coetzee.
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