Don’t miss the virtual book launch of A Poor Season for Whales by award-winning author Michiel Heyns
More about the book!
Jonathan Ball Publishers and The Reading List invite you to the virtual launch of Michiel Heyns’s new novel A Poor Season for Whales.
Heyns is an award-winning literary translator, the author of eight previous novels, most recently I am Pandarus, and the winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English Fiction. He is Professor Emeritus in English at Stellenbosch University.
A Poor Season for Whales is set in Hermanus, a gripping psychological drama with a touch of Heyns’s biting humour.
The author will be in conversation with acclaimed poet and novelist Finuala Dowling.
The launch will take place in a live video stream on The Reading List’s Facebook page and YouTube channel.
Virtual book launch event details
Date: Wednesday 17 June 2020
Time: 18:00 CAT
Facebook event
Links to watch:
See you then!
About the book
‘Pitch-perfect. A clever, bitingly funny novel. It had me riveted.’ – Finuala Dowling, author of Okay, Okay, Okay
Margaret Crowley, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly fifty-six years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. It was therefore hardly to be foreseen that in her fifty-sixth year she would kill a man with a kitchen knife.
When, after twenty-six years of marriage, Margaret Crowley’s husband leaves her for a younger man, she has to rethink her priorities and consider her options: as a free agent, with no ‘appurtenances’, how best to turn that freedom into a meaningful future rather than a mulling over the past?
Opting to leave behind her support system of family and friends, she moves to a seaside town with her dog, Benjy, intent upon a simple, uncluttered existence. But simplicity, it seems, can be a complicated affair.
When the charismatic young Jimmy Prinsloo-Mazibuko enters her life and her home, apparently intent upon establishing himself as a general-purpose handyman and cook, she finds herself torn between distrust and attraction. Is he merely the helpful, cheerful young man he seems, or is there a darker purpose to his assistance?
As in his award-winning Lost Ground, Heyns situates his novel in contemporary South Africa, with a lively cast of characters: Margaret’s forthright best friend, Frieda, her loose-limbed son, Carl, her exasperated daughter, Celia, and, most insistently of all, her opinionated ‘domestic’, Rebecca. Friends and family, it seems, are not to be left behind at will. And new acquaintances may not be what they seem.
Categories Fiction South Africa
Tags A Poor Season for Whales Book events Book launches Finuala Dowling Jonathan Ball Publishers Michiel Heyns Virtual book events Virtual book launches
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