"In her latest novel, Ingrid Winterbach is at her best: complex, funny, smart, mischievous, and without equal." Beeld
In hopes of winning her father's approval, Karolina Ferreira, an entomologist, goes to a small Free State town to research the survival strategies of a rare moth species. Tormented by memories of her family and plagued by erotic dreams, Karolina spends her nights playing snooker, drinking whisky, and dancing herself into a state of euphoria with the mysterious Kolyn.
As political, spiritual, and sexual tensions in the small town rise, a murder will take place, lovers will meet in the cemetery, and friendships will fall apart all building to an eruption of violence.
Originally published in Afrikaans in 1994, The Elusive Moth won Ingrid Winterbach the prestigious M-Net Book Prize and the Old Mutual Literary Prize. Finally available to American readers, this novel reinforces Winterbach’s reputation as one of South Africa's greatest contemporary writers.
Ingrid Winterbach is an artist and novelist whose work has won South Africa's M-Net Prize, Old Mutual Literary Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing, and the W.A. Hofmeyr Prize. To Hell with Cronjé won the 2004 Hertzog Prize, an honor she shares with the novelists Breyten Breytenbach and Etienne Leroux.
Iris Gouws is a translator from the Afrikaans.
". . . [A] moving book that doesn't feel overpowering, but nonetheless creeps into the reader's mind and haunts them in a subtle way. Poignant, shocking, and understated . . ."—The Mantle
"This text is, in all meanings of the word, sublime."—Die Burger
"An exquisite book, an essential voice."—Antjie Krog
"Heavy-handed and belabored, the novel carries its own thematic burdens on its back."—Kirkus Reviews
"Winterbach's clever, fascinating meditation on gender and power echoes societal flaws still present around the world, making the volume vital and timely."— Numéro Cinq
"The novel is part character study, part contemporary (when it was written, in the early 1990s) period-piece—of a South Africa in turmoil, a changing society in which old orders are shifting and new ones not yet established."—The Complete Review
"Winterbach ultimately navigates melancholy—not merely the deep feeling of sadness, but the inarticulacy that often accompanies such feeling. The looming cloud of an unknown and irredeemable future (like a door with broken hinge that cannot be closed) is projected on the characters. These characters are both harbingers of desire as well as bearers of their inability to have these desires met."—Music & Literature
"Winterbach deals with clear themes of life, love, and death, analyzed on a grand scale and shown in an equally grand evolutionary context. Her concern with her characters' places in the world is not frivolous, not simply a literary conceit chosen to allow her to give 'significance' to her story. In all her novels, she shows a total commitment to big ideas on a big scale and organizes them in such a way as to enhance the story, not overpower it."—Mary Whipple Reviews
