If an epistolary novel is well done, it packs an extraordinarily powerful punch. This one is brilliantly done, and will knock the stuffing out of you. The correspondents are Yusuf, a "coloured" drifter awaiting execution on Pretoria State Prison's Death Row for the. murder of maybe one, maybe 50 people, and Adrian, the white tour guide he tried to kill during an afternoon of casual sex four years earlier. Back and forth it goes, switching from one side of the South African experience to the other, plunging effortlessly into the dark pools which contain the notions of fantasy and reality, love and hate, imprisonment and liberty, yet never losing its grip on a narrative which is, to say the least, compelling. Antony Sher is an actor of some repute; it wouldn't surprise me if he starts picking up literary awards, as well.
