THE LIST

282pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2018

A novel about a group of MK veterans and the post-apartheid intelligence service.

"Gilder has done wonders with his story. While majorly set in a dystopian future, the narrative weaves in and out of the reality of our blasphemed past and alerts us to the fact that what we have not addressed will certainly rise up to menace us, if not us, then certainly our children and their progeny. His evocation of a hidden world of espionage and manipulation, heroism and cravenness, double-dealing and integrity, ingredients baked in with the bitter bread of the New South Africa, has given us memorable characters. It will be difficult - after reading this book - to encounter an individual on the street and not imagine the journeys he or she must have taken towards the making or unmaking of our fair democracy. It's a must-read." Mandla Langa, author of "The Texture of Shadows"

Barry Gilder went into exile in 1976, joined the ANC and MK, and served in the ANC underground leadership in Botswana in the 1980s. He returned to South Africa in 1991 and served as Deputy Director-General at the National Intelligence Agency, as Director-General of the Department of Home Affairs and as South Africa's Coordinator of Intelligence. He retired from government in 2007 and is currently Director Operations at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection. He is the author of the non-fiction work, Songs & Secrets: South Africa from liberation to governance.