/ 7 December 2007

Fiction review

Yolandi Groenewald reviews Deon Meyer’ Onsigbaar.

For years Afrikaans readers have been starved of quality thriller writers, who can dish up death and destruction in the most toe-curling fashion. As one of my friends puts it: ‘If you read Afrikaans, you either read sugary sweet romance or arty-farty literature that leaves you wondering about the meaning of it all.”

This same friend has been reading thriller and crime novels by the dozen in English and, though he is as Afrikaans as the boertjie next door, he has refused to touch anything in the taal other than newspapers. When I offered him a Deon Meyer thriller, he was sceptical.

But not for long. Three days later the book was returned to me with ‘those English writers can learn something from us. Skop, skiet en donder has never given me this much pleasure as in the soetste taal.”

He has been a complete addict ever since and before Meyer’s latest offering, Onsigbaar, came out, he had already pre-ordered the book. He knows all the Meyer characters and can quote their habits like those of old friends. He finished Onsigbaar in less than two days and was suitably dejected afterwards.

‘This was so good it could have gone on forever,” he said grimacing.

I couldn’t agree more. In this book Meyer introduces a new character, Lemmer, who has the typical, flawed characteristics of a Meyer protagonist up against the ropes, with the threat of violence ever present.

Lemmer is an ‘invisible”, a bodyguard without the threatening stance, who does his job quietly behind the scenes, but who is definitely not someone to tangle with. Just before Christmas the petite Emma hires him to protect her while she investigates the past of a supposedly dead brother.

As in all Meyer thrillers, things are not as they seem. The Mpumalanga Lowveld becomes a sinister setting for a fascinating plot and the type of excursion into the past that has become a Meyer coup-de-grâce.

In peeling off the plot layers Meyers dishes up a host of South African problems, including ecological ones. While the action scenes are plentiful and excellent, the plot is refined — a delicately prepared five-course meal. Onsig­baar touches on issues such as land claims, unchecked development of luxury estates, conflict between Western and African values, ‘development” versus the environment. And, as with the best of Meyer’s novels, the significant historic event.

The value of Meyer’s writing lies in the familiar Afrikaans landscape and South African setting in which he places his characters, while still managing to draw readers who are unfamiliar with the Afrikaans colloquial into the action. Real evil is universal, which is why Meyer’s book are so loved. His message is that the bad guys might crawl under the radar for some time, but they will never elude it altogether.

English readers, salivating in anticipation of the translation of Onsigbaar, will certainly not be disappointed..