Asbesmiddag | General Fiction

Etienne van Heerden

Etienne van Heerden’s new novel is a tour de force.

One afternoon, while having his hair cut at an Italian salon in one of the seedier parts of Stellenbosch, a novelist (and Professor in Creative Writing at a Cape Town university) happens to meet an elderly, well-known billionaire, an asbestos tycoon. This chance meeting – or was it destiny? – puts in motion a chain of events that will have far-reaching consequences for the lives of both men. The novelist’s father – erstwhile fire-eater and ringmaster – shared an unhappy history with the tycoon, and by making the tycoon a character in his new novel, the author indulges in a voyeuristic form of revenge. Or so he assumes ... for as the story progresses, it becomes increasingly unclear whether the novelist is in charge of his story and characters, or vice versa.

The lives of the novelist and the tycoon intersect and become increasingly intertwined, almost like the knotted necks of the two giraffes that performed the main act in the Karoo circus that the novelist remembers from his childhood days.

Who is the story’s REAL author – the novelist or the tycoon? Blood oaths, sensuality, an ever changing South Arica and a mysterious West African character … these are all elements in the landscape of a novel that focuses on the role of the artist, a sometimes cruel contemplation of the ethical problems with which a writer of fiction is confronted.