THIRTEEN CENTS

194pp., paperback, Cape Town, (2000) 2014

Winner of the 2001 Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region.

Azure, a black teenage boy, survives through prostitution on the streets of Cape Town - until he climbs Table Mountain and finds shelter in a cave.

“Duiker is to literature what Steve Biko is to politics, both having died at the tender age of 30 but leaving indelible footprints in our collective memory.” Siphiwo Mahala, Mail & Guardian

“K. Sello Duiker’s short novel, Thirteen Cents is simultaneously gruesome, violent, deeply disturbing, whimsical, and beautiful ... Told from Azure’s perspective, Duiker weaves a narrative that lays bare the violence, exploitation, racial and sexual politics found just under the surface of South African society.” Africa Is a Country

South African novelist Kabelo Sello Duiker was born in Johannesburg in 1974. His novel, The Quiet Violence of Dreams, won the 2002 Herman Charles Bosman Prize. He committed suicide in 2005. His unfinished work, The Hidden Star, was published in 2006.