One Tongue Singing

Product Description

Camille Pascal, a young, unmarried French nurse comes to South Africa with her father & her small daughter, Zara, during the closing years of the apartheid regime. The family settles amongst a wine-growing community in the Western Cape where they become involved in the lives of victims of the System. Interwoven with Camille's story is that of Jake Coleman, a painter with an international reputation, a deep-seated fear of failure, & a complicated private life. It is in the exclusive Jake Coleman School of Art that Zara, now a talented artist in her late teens, decides to enrol. She is a feral, troubled girl, obsessed with scenes of violence, & quite unlike anything Jake has encountered. One Tongue Singing explores some of the different faces of power, both in the ways it operates between individuals & in societies. It is written with economy, humanity & a hard brilliance, & it announces a distinctive new voice from South Africa.