• Short listed for Commonwealth Writer's Prize Africa Best Book 2011
• Longlisted for Sunday Times Literary Award for Fiction 2011
• Selected for Exclusive Books HomeBru 2010

In Banquet at Brabazan, my sixth novel, I take my readers back to the heart of Cape Town's violent inner city, creating a cornucopia of events featuring superb food, romance, a cappella, an angel, Shakespearean drama, reflections on South Africa’s war in Angola, drug-money, a muti murder, visions of the Afterlife and various works of fine art with flashbacks to my earlier work of magic-realism, A Time of Angels.

The novel is richly furnished with fine-art, poetry and magic, threaded through with my trademark philosophical questioning of war and the human condition.

At core, Banquet at Brabazan is the story of an enduring, secret love affair between a boss and his secretary who create a fantastical, theatrical, costumed, Italianate life for themselves within the confines of her apartment.

Outside of that contrived space, exists the real world of loneliness, xenophobia and crime that have come to mark post-apartheid South Africa.

I lead you through both worlds, allowing the lives of a small group of people, who have not met before, to intersect over a period of ten days at Brabazan Bar & Lodge, in Long Street, Cape Town. Here I reveal a poignant and beautiful patina of hope and love.