Fathers and fugitives

The captivating latest from Naude (Mad Honey) tracks a passive South African writer through a series of misadventures and a reckoning with filial duty. The reader meets Daniel, who is gay, at the Tate Modern, where he picks up two crude Serbian men and slips into a strange relationship with them, letting them live at his London apartment where they engage in emotionless sex and Daniel feels a sense of foreboding. Creatively stalled, Daniel accepts the Serbs' invitation to travel with them to Belgrade, where they both turn up dead. Daniel then returns to South Africa to attend to his dying father and eventually, under the terms of his father's will, is obligated to spend a month with his mother's nephew, Theon, in the rural Free State province. The cousins only met once, decades ago, but Daniel left a lasting impression on Theon, a country bumpkin enamored by his urbane relative. In later sections, the cousins bond during a trip to Japan, then take in a pair of drifters, and the plot comes full circle with disastrous results. Naude is an extraordinary writer, going deep into the psyches of his characters while maintaining a startling aura of mystery. This deserves a wide readership. (Sept.)