Praise Routine Number 4 | General Fiction

Michael Rands

Byron Winterleaf, a 23-year old white guy, is on the verge of losing his job as a translator at a Xhosa-themed restaurant.

And during heavy rains his back garden in Observatory, Cape Town, is flooded, killing the marijuana plants that he’d been hoping to harvest for profit. But the flood also brings something else to the surface – it’s a bone, that much is clear, but whose?

Susan Ridge, head of Restoring Dignity to Forgotten Minorities (RDFM) is adamant that it is the bone of a Khoi victim of the 1713 smallpox epidemic. She convinces Byron that his house should be converted into a museum, to honour these forgotten people. But it soon becomes apparent that Ridge’s intentions are anything but honourable – she is simply playing on a collective sense of guilt, in order to make a personal profit.

Byron finds himself caught up in the middle of a cultural scam. However, this time it’s not only his job at a restaurant that he stands to lose – his house, the only sure thing in his life, becomes a battleground, and if he’s unable to take control of the situation he stands to lose everything ...

Praise Routine number 4 is a quite unique, startling “slacker novel”, brimming with intrigue, humour and pathos.