Umuzi is proud to present Theo and Flora, the new novel from Mark Winkler!

About the book

When novelist Charlie Wasserman’s wife Sascha divorces him, he finds a box of letters among the belongings his investment-banker wife did not care to remove when she signed over their house and asked never to be contacted by him again.

Written between 1940 and 1944, the letters expose a love affair between Sascha’s grandfather, Theo, a 40-something lawyer, and Flora, a much younger journalist. The letters spark an idea for a novel, even though Sascha had, via her lawyers, asked Charlie to destroy them. All the while the story of Theo and Flora’s lives unfurls, always against the backdrop of the 1940s and what it meant for Jewish people across the world.

Theo and Flora is a delight to read: skilfully constructed, fluidly written, witty and entertaining, with, at the same time, a poignant undertow of sorrow and loss. The writer has a keen eye for detail and a droll way with language, creating a novel that is often laugh-out-loud funny, yet the humour is rooted in a humane, compassionate conception of character that deepens and complicates it.

About the author

Mark Winkler is the author of the critically acclaimed novels An Exceptionally Simple Theory (of Absolutely Everything), Wasted, which was longlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, and The Safest Place You Know.

His short story ‘When I Came Home’ was shortlisted for the 2016 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and ‘Ink’ was awarded third place in the 2016 Short Story Africa competition.

Categories Fiction South Africa

Tags Mark Winkler New books New releases Penguin Random House SA Theo and Flora Umuzi