★BY THE WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES FICTION PRIZE 2019
★Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize 2021
★North American, World Arabic, Palop (African Portuguese-Speaking Countries), and Film/TV rights sold.

Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood from his hands when the truce is announced. Like everyone else in this battle-weary land, he will be unmoored by the war ending, his sense of purpose fading by the hour.
But why is Emile Coetzee’s life so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it?
From boyhood to manhood, Emil Coetzee’s life is traced. From the privileged boarding school with its motto ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, to falling in love with the free-spirited Marion whose open marriage gives him a glimpse of passion – with dire consequences for his heart.
Set in a southern African country that is never named, this tale of human fallibility, told with generosity and a light touch, interrogates – the coloniser, the oppressor, the perpetrator – from within.

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of The Theory of Flight, winner of South Africa’s most prestigious literary award, the 2019 Sunday Times’ Barry Ronge Fiction Prize. She is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University, as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. She was born in Zimbabwe.