THE RAW MAN

Fiction (Literary Fiction) 330 pages

Jonathan Cape Ltd -

 

‘An extraordinary novel, and a work of rare conception, bringing together, within one individual, the painfully conflicted history of southern Africa.’ 

-- Brian Chikwava, author of HARARE NORTH

 

A remarkable debut novel set in Southern Africa, where a ‘blood reader’ struggles to unravel his family’s secrets and come to grips with his ancestry,  his own troubled past. In sections oscillating between the material and spiritual worlds we learn Gordon’s story in reverse, from the military in the Rhodesian bush war, to adolescent rebellion, the brutal initiations of youth; back to childhood, birth and beyond. We travel the scarred landscapes of Southern Africa: a fractured region contending with its own history and a terrible present reality. Gordon must do the same; reading the blood stories of those he meets, uncovering in visions the secrets of his own family’s mixed past. Reminiscent in its intensity to Joseph Conrad, in its scope to J. M. Coetzee, and in its storytelling to Jorge Luis Borges, THE RAW MAN is a revelatory work of fiction, one that is impossible to forget.