karoo boy : a boy's journey to manhood in a cruel yet beautiful land.
Karoo Boy : the most colourful book I have ever read. Chris Martin, Coldplay
A beautifully evocative coming-of-age story. Bryce Courtenay, author of The Power of One
Karoo Boy is told in the voice of a [boy], who in his own way is as captivating and memorable as Holden Caulfield. With his supple and inventive use of the language, Blacklaws creates fully realized characters and vivid imagery that shimmers against a stark backdrop. John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
This story is set out in prose honed by a writer with an unusually keen ability to make words yield their music. Denis Hirson, author of The House Next Door to Africa
The language [of Karoo Boy] is full of life and novelty (without making a parade of either quality) and conveys well the mingled speculativeness, euphoria and despondency of adolescence. Dan Jacobson, author of A Dance in the Sun
A backwater bildungsroman, Karoo Boy captures memorably the casual brutalities of small-town South African life ... Rob Nixon, New York Times Book Review
a riotous vision of 1976 Cape Town, South Africa ... Anderson Tepper, Village Voice, New York
outline:
14-year-old Douglas Thomas sees his twin brother killed in a fluke accident on the beach. The world of his childhood in 1970's Cape Town is turned upside down. Douglas and his artist mother move upcountry to a backwater town in the arid Karoo. Here Douglas encounters a beautiful, untamed girl named Marika (with her adventurous spirit and cruel father) and an old Xhosa man named Moses (with his junkyard Volvo and dreams of Cape Town). Against the bitter backdrop of apartheid South Africa, Douglas learns to deal with loss and develops an insight into himself and his place in the world, a world where dreams and reality meet in a surreal twist. Blazing with colour and light, Karoo Boy offers a violent yet lyrical evocation of South Africa.
history: Juta: Cape Town, 2004. Harcourt: New York, 2005. As Jongen uit de Karoo by Ambo: Amsterdam, 2005. As Karoo boy by Flammarion: Paris, 2006. And as Malindi by Liebeskind: Munich, 2008.
