Join us on September 20th at 6:30 pm - 8:30pm for the UK book launch of The Child.
The Child
After suffering a mental breakdown and losing his job at a New York advertising agency, a young man returns to Cape Town with his husband, Adrian. It’s 2018 and Cape Town is about to run out of water. This isn’t the homecoming they dreamed of, but the couple is determined to hold on to hope.
They are going to start a family by adopting a child. Someone to love, as the world around them falls apart. Maybe even a chance to atone for the sins of this country. But as the adoption gets underway, the narrator is forced to confront the childhood spectres he has spent a lifetime avoiding. While his marriage and sense of self begin to unravel, his life becomes increasingly enmeshed with that of their bubbly and outspoken domestic worker, Sibs, and her quiet young daughter, Buhle. And the more he tries to fix things, the worse they get.
Lies, violence and trauma endanger their hopes of a new beginning. And in the chaos of it all, he has to find his way back to Adrian, and to himself.
"Outrageously beautiful" - News24
"A testament to the power of story-telling" - Sunday Times
"An important, if not essential, voice of contemporary South Africa" - C.A. Davids
"Fresh, unflinching and propulsive" - S.J. Naudé
About the author:
Alistair Mackay is the author of The Child. His debut novel, It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way was long-listed for the British Science Fiction Association Awards, The Sunday Times Literary Awards, and was chosen by Brittle Paper as a Notable African Book of 2022. His writing explores queerness, marginalisation, social justice and climate change. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and an MA in Politics from Edinburgh University. He lives in Cape Town.