The Long Silence of Mario Salviati - Softcover

Van Heerden, Etienne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340819995 ISBN 13: 9780340819999

Publisher: Sceptre, 2003

Synopsis

When Ingi Friedlander travels to Yearsonend in the rugged interior of South Africa to purchase a statue, its eccentric sculptor, Jonty Jack, does not want to sell - he says it was not his creation, but simply appeared miraculously. Ingi decides to stay and try to win Jonty's trust, but soon realises that the townspeople suspect she has come to seek a different treasure - the legendary wagon of gold brought in by defeated Boer soldiers. Gradually she prises open the secrets of the past, secrets of greed, racism and vaulting ambition, whose key lies with the Italian POW Mario Salviati - deaf, dumb and now blind. Watched over by a very earthy angel and long dead humans, Ingi forces a resolution with the past and faces up to her own future.

About this title

Review:

A wondrous tale, weaving magic realism and history, in which Van Heerden captures the stark beauty of the Karoo and its people. (Xan Rice, The Times)

Extraordinary ... Mario Salviati is a compelling and moving creation. (Christopher Hope, Guardian)

Rich in insight and hope ... an impressively colourful picture of a fascinating and contradictory country. (Mark Stanton, Scotsman)

If ever a book captured the static charge of a sunbaked landscape, it's Etienne van Heerden's magical fifth novel ... The tales [Ingi] hears are romantic, tragic, funny and bloody, preserved like fossils in sandstone (Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph)

It's easy to see why Van Heerden is being described as an Afrikaans Marquez ... [he is] an exceptionally gifted writer. (Scotland on Sunday)

A complex tale, full of richly drawn characters ... fascinating (Margaret Quinn, Big Issue)

Magical ... a new literary star is emerging (OK! magazine)

Dazzling storytelling magically weaves the fantastical with the everyday and lends a compelling power to the author's meditations on history, art and life. (Guardian)

Engrossing (Choice Magazine)

From the Publisher:

A novel that has been likened to One Hundred Years of Solitude (in the South African press) and described (in the Guardian) as an African novel that mixes Under Milk Wood with Prester John, this is a rich, colourful, exuberantly imaginative tale with a dark undertow. Winner of the M-Net Book Prize (South Africa's most high-profile prize for fiction) and WA Hofmeyr Prize for the best novel in Afrikaans, it shows that post-apartheid South African fiction is alive and kicking, and that not all of it makes for grim reading.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sceptre
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0340819995
• ISBN 13: 9780340819999
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448