Description
Book SynopsisTheodore Blanchaille is searching for the missing millions of the Boer leader Paul Kruger, and his lost city of gold. As a child he had heard tales of Kruger from a wayward priest; what follows is an astonishing journey that takes Blanchaille through a landscape peopled with spies, visionaries, terrorists, traitors, patriots and exiled presidents.
From huge transit camps on the veld to a notorious prison block, from a township in the bloody aftermath of 'pacification' to a secret travellers' rest for fleeing pilgrims, and from the streets and cellars of Soho to paradise at last on a Swiss mountainside, Kruger's Alp is a fantastical political satire of extraordinary invention.
Trade Review"'An extremely attractive book, witty and fast-moving and densely imagined' Sunday Times 'Boldly conceived, highly original... It's grey, streaked with crimson, shot through with that dream gold.' Norman Shrapnel, Guardian 'It's Hope's insistence on doing things the unexpected way that have made him the celebrated writer he is.' Sunday Express 'Hope's invention never flags and his scathing intelligence forcefully points up the sheer, outrageous contradictions of the system.' Mary Hope, Spectator 'The dazzling control of image and metaphor makes it a brilliant literary disquisition on dreams and truth, as well as on South Africa.' Robert Winder, Books & Bookmen"