Troubled waters

"'Troubled Waters' is a novel of transition. Set in 1974, the action focuses on two young people who are being shaken loose from their roots in family and tribe by the winds of political change. There is the Transvaler Andries Malan, conscripted into the South African bush war against SWAPO and posted to teach Biblical Studies in the black school near Rundu. And there is Lucia, subtly alienated from the local community by her university training, whom he loves briefly and leaves with child when his tour is ended. Surrounding them, or surfacing in memories and dreams, are other border crossers: Mavis, the maid who was closer to Andries than his own mother but whose children he has never met; Frank the misfit 'Suitwester' who honours the ways of the children he teaches; Moyo the herdboy who becomes a guerilla - and, always present yet barely glimpsed as brief apparitions among the foliage of trees, the PLAN fighters. What is more, the order and dignity of tribal life have themselves been irretrievably fractured by the imposition of puppet 'self-rule' on an ethnically defined Kavango 'nation'. A penetrating political understanding controls the narrative which centres on the troubled mind of Andries. 'The Other' is imaginatively entered and observed without either sentimentality or rancour. This steady calm gaze is the most remarkable virtue of a beautifully told novel"--Annemarie Heywood, back cover.