EACH MORTAL THING

227pp., paperback, Cape Town, 2023

Terence, a young university lecturer, offers to introduce a novice South African writer nominated for a British literary prize to the sights of London.

Michiel Heyns’ novels include The Children’s Day, The Reluctant Passenger and The Typewriter’s Tale. He has thrice been awarded the Herman Charles Bosman Award for English Fiction, and his novel Lost Ground also won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. He won the 2008 English Academy's Sol Plaatje Award for Translating as well as the South African Translators' Institute Award for a Literary Translation for his translation of Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat. He reviewed regularly for the Sunday Independent, for which he was awarded the English Academy's Pringle Prize for Reviewing for 2006 and again for 2010. For much of his adult life he was Professor of English at the University of Stellenbosch.