Praise for Fathers and Fugitives
“Cool and intelligent, unsettling and deeply felt, Naudé’s voice is something new in South African writing.” —Damon Galgut, Booker Prize winning author of The Promise
“An astonishing and deeply moving novel. There seem to be no limits to Naude’s powers as a writer.”—Rapport (South Africa)
“The serpentine, truly unpredictable plot takes what could have been a standard trope of the dying father and his final wish, the gay son and his last acts to please a parent, into hitherto unexplored territory for Naudé. This moody, melancholy heartbreaker of a novel, with a push and pull between the global and hyper-local, sweeps you off your feet. It then punches you in the solar plexus as you learn to care deeply for a cast of deeply wounded characters."—Jonathan Amid, News24 (South Africa)
“In a certain sense the novel can be read as a contemporary Disgrace, but it's far subtler and more nuanced. It is a masterpiece that avoids judgements and conclusions, that simply states and yet grabs hold of the heart. It leaves me breathless with admiration. What a world-class author we have in this double Hertzog Prize winner. We will keep our eyes fixed on the horizon.”—Deborah Steinmar, Vrye Weekblad
PRAISE FOR S.J. NAUDÉ
“These are the mature stories of a master...They have much to say about what one may call the South African condition, or part of it...These are deceptively easyreading stories, to be returned to more than once to uncover new meanings and dimensions.”—Hans Pienaar, Business Live, on Mad Honey
“Mad Honey is a collection of eight short stories by SJ Naudé that take you on a journey across the globe: Cape Town, Iceland, Belgium, the Alps, New England, and finally to Namibia...A collection of stories that will haunt, engage and disturb you.”—Christine E. Hann, The Witness on Mad Honey
“This is an outstanding, accomplished novel with both literary depth and a powerful emotional charge.”—Alastair Mabbott, The Herald (Scotland), on The Third Reel
“It is a magnificent, brilliant feat of writing, visceral and unflinching, and marks the point at which Naudé moves to the front line of the best of South African writers...Few books in the past years have I thought of more highly, or have affected me as much.”—Beverley Roos-Muller, Cape Argus, on The Third Reel
“Naudé has written a masterpiece of literature with an end that will leave you staring into the heart of light or darkness. But, mostly looking towards the light.”—Jennifer Crocker, Cape Times, on The Third Reel
“A work that definitely pushes the boundaries of convention, hope and desire, it is written in an eminently readable and beautiful style...The story is intricate, ambitious and haunting. Reflective of the cities in which the book is set, you’ll relive the sights and smells of an era that was fraught with sex, music, illness, loss and love. The construction is that of a fine piece of architecture, brilliantly fashioned and held together, taking us on a step-by-step journey through all the rooms of the psyche... Without doubt a book of great literary standing and one that holds the reader in its thrall, never losing its grip on you.”—Beryl Eichenberger, The Books Page, on The Third Reel
“Naudé’s beautifully shaped and often heartbreaking stories take the idea of home and tear it apart, fling it upside down and refashion it into a thing more mobile and less anchored...At once unsettling and deeply moving, this collection announces the arrival of a writer of great humanity and style.”—Patrick Flanery on The Alphabet of Birds
“A breathtaking, tender writer.”—Publishers Weekly on The Alphabet of Birds
“Naudé writes compellingly about South Africa and its dilemmas, but he is equally at home, or perhaps not at home, in many other places, in Hanoi, Phoenix, London, Tokyo. His characters are restless, drifting between cultures and languages, the farm and the city, the difficult present and the vanished past.”– Ivan Vladislavić on The Alphabet of Birds
“Naudé’s honest confrontation of [complex] questions is unsettling...[Naudé] challenges us to retain sympathy for characters whose motives are sometimes dishonourable...The response he is guiding us towards in these disturbing and uplifting stories is openness.”—Alison Kelly, Times Literary Supplement, on The Alphabet of Birds
“Naudé’s cool, incisive prose acts as a scalpel, laying bare the sinews and tendons of the stories he is telling. The Alphabet of Birds, translated here from the original Afrikaans by Naudé himself, is not a collection for the faint of heart but it does not leave us entirely without hope. The protagonists are ever searching for more in the face of disaster. And sometimes in this accelerating world of cascading information, we need to cut through the noise to get at the heart of the matter. In Naudé, we have an able surgeon.”—Cassie Hay, The Literary Review, on The Alphabet of Birds
