Voetstoots | General Fiction

John Miles

A moving novel about the fortunes and misfortunes of the ordinary man in a society in which violence is never far from the surface. The stranger August settles in a small West Coast village while finishing the editing of a recently discovered journal of the 18th century explorer.

Soon, August finds himself drawn into a healing new relationship. The love which develops between August and Tessa is however threatened by the return to town of her husband, a volatile and unpredictable man.

As in Miles’s previous novel, Die Buiteveld, the complexity of someone’s past is portrayed against the current socio-political situation, with references to guilt about the colonial past and apartheid.