Shooting Angels

Description

Somehow the most famous businessman in the country had found Charlie in the backwater where he had been hiding all these years and arrived unannounced to give him an envelope of money and a simple message: come back to the Capital to learn what really happened to Constanza - the woman he loved - on that terrible night decades before. At first, Charlie is furious that Joe should just reappear with such an outrageous demand. He soon realizes a fire has been relit; one he thought had been extinguished by long years in the wilderness. But by the time Charlie returns to the city to meet Joe, the tycoon is dead. And so begins Charlie Croker's epic journey into his own past. It is an odyssey which seems, at times, to lead straight to the broken heart of the country itself. After a lifetime spent trying to forget, Charlie realizes that there can, finally, be a reckoning with those he has loved, those he has betrayed and the guilt that has been suffocating him.

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of nine novels and one collection of short stories, including Kruger's Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, and My Mother's Lovers, published by Atlantic Books in 2006 to great acclaim. He is also a poet and playwright and author of the celebrated memoir White Boy Running (1988).

'A brilliant, compelling novel about innocence and betrayal.' Kate Saunders, The Times 'It might seem fanciful to call Christopher Hope the South African Evelyn Waugh, but there is something in the comparison... Beautifully paced, elegantly written, witty, moving and provocative.' Andrew van der Vlies, TLS 'Shooting Angels is a mordant coming-of-age novel, a political novel, and a savage portrait of Joe Angel, whose gift for survival in the shifting sands of post-apartheid South Africa, and whose rage for control, are breathtaking to the very end.' Jay Parini, Guardian 'Hope's latest offering is an enticing one, beautifully written... It draws us in and keeps us guessing.' Karen Funnell, Irish Examiner