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The dubious salvation of Jack V.

Strauss, Jacques more...

Format: Paperback
Library Classification: Adult Fiction
BIC Subjects: General & literary fiction
Audience: General/trade
Publisher: Vintage
Imprint: Vintage
Publication Date: 15/05/2012
Place of Publication: United Kingdom

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RRP: $19.95
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Even as an eleven year old I had a strong sense that the universe was setting up nasty traps for me, all sorts of really horrible ways to die in which (and this is the crucial point) I would in some way be complicit in my own demise (and this before I had done anything to warrant this particular anxiety). I have always been shit scared of the deranged universe and it's not really that stupid and irrational...it gets all of us eventually. It's 1989, and in the dying years of the Apartheid regime, eleven-year-old Jack Viljee considers himself the centre of his world. The son of an Afrikaans father and an English mother, wedged between a strident older and favoured younger sister, Jack allies himself with the family's beloved maid, Susie.

"[Jacques] Strauss's often-hilarious debut captures a remarkable period of time without resorting to any heavy-handed political messaging. And in Jack he has created an unlikely, and utterly believable, voice of a generation. [A] profane, brutally honest portrait of tween angst." --"Kirkus Reviews
""Jack is a delight to follow, and despite his youth and his assertion that 'I might have been precocious but I wasn't particularly smart, ' he proves himself to be a reliable narrator. Strauss uses the child to explore 1980s South Africa, aligning the changes the Viljee clan goes through with those their country is about to face . . . The strength of Strauss's storytelling and the indelible impressions his creations make hijack the story in the best possible way. A well-crafted atmospheric debut." ---"Publishers Weekly
""Yes, first novelist Strauss delivers a beautifully rendered coming-of-age story that simultaneously unfolds an understanding of life in apartheid South Afri

Winner of Commonwealth Book Prize - Africa 2012.

Title: The dubious salvation of Jack V.
Subtitle:
Contributors: By (author) Jacques Strauss

ISBN 13: 9780099555070
ISBN 10: 0099555077

Publisher: Vintage
Imprint: Vintage
Publication Date: 15/05/2012
Place of Publication: London, United Kingdom
Edition:

BIC Subjects: General & literary fiction
Dewey Classification: 823.92 (DC23)
NBS Classification: General & Literary Fiction

Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Thickness: 15mm
Weight: 176g