FALSE RIVER

Dominique Botha's poignant debut is an elegy to a rural existence and her brother – both now forever lost. The novel is based on true events.

“You are too close to the water,” Paul whispered. “There are barbels in the mud. They will wake up if you step on them.” When Paul and Dominique are sent to boarding schools in Natal, their idyllic childhood on a Free State farm is over. Their parents' leftist politics has made life impossible in the local dorp school. Angry schoolboy Paul is a promising poet, his sister his confidant. But his literary awakening turns into a descent. He flees the oppression of South Africa, only to meet his death in London. Set in apartheid's dying days FALSE RIVER vividly tracks a rural childhood on a farm in the Orange Free State where young Dominique's ‘lefty' parents are an anomaly in the racist community. Her wonder at nature is infectious, her sharp eye for satire a witty treat, but throughout there is a dark, elegiac current that flows into a heartbreaking story of sibling love and loss, as a brilliant brother's life unravels.