about the novel

When his father suggests he take time off to visit estranged relatives, Emil—a young surgeon-in-training—sets aside his studies and, for reasons he doesn’t yet understand, moves to Stadmutter, a multiracial city at the southern tip of Africa. There, he is disquieted by days of unaccustomed aimlessness and by his encounters with Bolling, a wealthy Haitian-German who woos him intellectually and sexually, and with Tamsin, a PhD student working to define herself against her country’s shifting cultural hierarchies.

Beneath a veneer of indolence, Stadmutter seethes. As Bolling’s covert support for an upstart Creole movement threatens decades of racial progress, Emil is drawn increasingly toward exile.

Wilderness of Mirrors  builds on my earlier explorations of Cape Town and creoleness. Read my essays about places including Cabo Verde, Stuttgart and Djibouti as well as music and arts criticism here.

You can read my bio here.