WHO KILLED PIET BAROL?

369pp., paperback, London, 2016

A novel set in Cape Town at the beginning of the First World War. Piet Barol, the character from Richard Mason's "History of a Pleasure Seeker," and his wife have posed as French aristocrats, and are now nearly bankrupt. Piet travels to a remote spirit-filled forest in search of a mythical ‘furniture tree’ with which to save their furniture business, guided by two servants whose Xhosa tribe resides deep in the forest.

Richard Mason was born in South Africa in 1978 and raised in Britian. His first novel, "The Drowning People" won Italy's Cavour Prize. His other novels are "Us", "The Lighted Rooms" and "The History of a Pleasure Seeker".