Michiel Heyns
After a thirty-year absence Christopher Turner returns to Paris. He is here to extricate his best friendâ€™s son Eric from the mercenary machinations of some Parisian gold-digger â€“ or so it is assumed, at home in South Africa. Christopher, with melancholy memories of Paris, is deeply ambivalent about the city; and, as for the young Eric, Christopher remembers him as a brutish lout with little to recommend himself. ,But both the city and the young man take Christopher by surprise: far from having been corrupted by the place, Eric turns out to have been immeasurably improved by it. The spoilt son has become a considerate and attentive host with charming manners. Furthermore, as Christopher is gradually introduced to Ericâ€™s associates, he finds to his dismay that he likes them â€“ likes, above all, the beautiful Beatrice du Plessis, in her day a supermodel, now the mother of a young daughter apparently destined to follow in her motherâ€™s footsteps. And Paris exerts her spell anew â€¦,As Christopher comes to know and enjoy this ambiguous world, he finds his moral categories challenged: is beauty a trap for the innocent young, or a self-validating, even ennobling attribute of a fully lived life? Responding to the gentle appeal of Beatrice, he feels ever more strongly that the young manâ€™s place is in Paris with her, rather than on his fatherâ€™s farm in Franschhoek. But Eric has ideas of his own â€¦,Exploring, as in the widely applauded Lost Ground, the tensions between the fatherland and a larger world, Michiel Heyns turns an ironic eye on the most seductive city on earth, and traces with humour and insight the invisible furies of the heart. ,ABOUT THE AUTHOR:,Michiel Heyns is the author of five previous novels: The Childrenâ€™s Day, The Reluctant Passenger, The Typewriterâ€™s Tale, Bodies Politic and the critically acclaimed Lost Ground. He is also an award-winning translator. He was until recently professor of English at the University of Stellenbosch.
Fiction,Southern Africa,South Africa
Invisible Furies