WE TWO FROM HEAVEN, a memoir

231pp., paperback, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9781776193844

James Whyle interweaves formative experiences from his life - war, conscription, injury, desertion - with his father's letters from the Western Front during the First World War. 

"With insistence, humour and a wry, haunted nostalgia, James Whyle excavates a palimpsest of texts and voices to approach the questions existentially familiar to white South Africans: Who are we, how did we get here, and what does it mean? An invaluable contribution to the self-orienting literature of our country." Darrel Bristow-Bovey, author of Finding Endurance

"A boldly imagined and beautifully written memoir. Lives that are worlds apart are revealed in counterpoint - an exchange across the decades between father and son, two young soldiers wounded by very different wars. Whyle’s prose is finely tuned, unflinching in its approach to painful subjects, but also laced with wry humour and the sheer delight of being alive" Ivan Vladislaviç, author and Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, University of the Witwatersrand

James Whyle grew up in the Amatole Mountains of the Eastern Cape. Conscripted into the apartheid army, he was discharged on the grounds of insanity. His play about this experience, National Madness, won an Amstel Playwright of the Year merit award in 1982. His short story, "The Story", won the 2011 Pen/Studzinski competition, and his novel, Book of War, won the 2012 M-Net Lit Prize for best debut.