BROKEN MONSTERS

441 pp., paperback, Cape Town, 2014

A new thriller set in Detroit, by Lauren Beukes.

Beukes "genuinely conjures up horror in its purest, most sincere form. There is real grief when characters we have come to identify with are subjected to all the banality and monstrosity of evil, and a goose-flesh sensation as we realise how similar the evil's values are to our own beliefs in art, in opportunity, in wanting the world to be a better place. Never exploitative, never superficial, never uncomplicated: Beukes shows how horror can be the best way to explain our unbelievable reality. She uses the mode like the knife that opens the oyster." Stuart Kelly, The Guardian

Lauren Beukes is also the author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City (winner of the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke Award), and Moxyland. She lives in Cape Town.