Ten Great Books set in CAPE TOWN

9th November 2021

Cape Town is the latest destination for our ‘Ten Great Books’ series. Ten Great Books set in CAPE TOWN. Cape Town is a port city on South Africa’s southwest coast, on a peninsula beneath the imposing Table Mountain. Slowly rotating cable cars climb to the mountain’s flat top, from which there are sweeping views of the city, the busy harbour and boats heading for Robben Island, the notorious prison that once held Nelson Mandela.

‘Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival in Cape Town was the beginning of all South Africa’s problems’ – Jacob Zuma

Apostle Lodge by Paul Mendelson

From the author of the acclaimed The First Rule of Survival, praised by Lee Child as ‘excellent and uncompromising’, comes Paul Mendelson’s explosive latest thriller.

Apostle Lodge looks out over the ocean, an award-winning mansion built by a renowned architect. Stark and minimal, its black opaque windows hide a terrible secret. As Colonel Vaughn De Vries investigates the depraved crime committed within its walls, he believes there may be more than one killer on the loose, all with connections to a charismatic man who as a child, drowned his sister and shattered his family.

And his work is not over yet.

Cobra by Deon Meyer

Why would a mathematics professor from Cambridge University, renting a holiday home outside Cape Town, require a false identity and three bodyguards? And where is he, now that they are dead? The only clue to the bodyguards’ murder is the snake engraved on the shell casings of the bullets that killed them.

Investigating the massacre, Benny Griessel and his team find themselves being drawn into an international conspiracy with shocking implications. It seems it is not just the terrorists and criminals of Britain and South Africa who may fear the Professor’s work, but the politicians too.

As the body count begins to spiral viciously, Benny must put his new-found love life aside and focus on finding the one person who could give him a break in the case: a teenage pickpocket on the run in the city. But Benny is not the only person hunting for Tyrone Kleinbooi . . .

Relentlessly suspenseful, topical, hard-hitting and richly rewarding, COBRA is a superb novel from an author who is acclaimed around the world as a brilliant voice in crime fiction.

The Tyranny of Trust by Neil Gevisser

In Cape Town, South Africa in 1972, Aaron meets Angela in a bar. He has no way of knowing that she has sought him out because he is a White man about to move into District Six – an area that just days before had been Black, with the reclassification causing mass enforced evictions. He’s not to know that she’s Coloured – her skin is as white as his as they disrobe – but now he has broken the law by sleeping with her and his freedom is in her hands. He’s also not to know that she’s a political assassin and probably the most dangerous woman that he’s ever likely to meet.

What he does know is that there is something bubbling under the surface in the South Africa around him and there’s an energy in the stolen house he shares with the marijuana smoke, political discourse and public expressions of the flesh. It is unseen and unheard but always threatening to build to a crescendo and blow his world apart.

Conquest by Julian Stockwin

Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar removed the spectre of invasion and England is now free to seek conquests and colonies in the furthest reaches of the world.

Captain Kydd joins an expedition to take Dutch-held Cape Town, a strategic imperative to secure the rich trade-route to India. But even if the British can defeat the enemy and take possession of the capital, there is still more fighting to be done.

Kydd and his men must defend the fragile colony from attacks by the enemy from all sides, while braving the wild beasts and hostile environment of Africa’s vast and savage hinterland.

Daddy’s Girl by Margie Orford

Friday evening. A deserted street below Table Mountain. A six-year-old ballerina waits alone for her mother to fetch her. Then an unmarked car approaches, and she is gone. With no trace of where, or why she’s been abducted, suspicion falls on her divorced father, Captain Riedwaan. The boss of Cape Town’s gang unit, Riedwaan is tough and ruthless, a man accustomed to being in control. But now he is powerless. Suspended from the squad for wasting police time, Riedwaan watches helplessly as the search for his daughter is called off. In desperation, Riedwaan turns to investigative journalist and police profiler Dr Clare Hart, whose brutal TV documentary about Cape Town’s missing young girls has made her something of a local celebrity. Clare has seen how aspiring gangsters in the Cape Flats ghetto prove their worth by tormenting children. She knows that the odds of a victim’s survival worsen with each passing minute. She understands that finding the child without police involvement will be difficult, dangerous, and probably illegal. But she also knows she’ll do anything to help this heartbroken father – even if it puts all their lives at risk.

Blood Orange by Troy Blacklaws

Gecko’s childhood is one of sheltered, almost magical innocence on a farm in Natal. He spends his days taking barefoot expeditions with his dogs and his nights listening to Springbok Radio, unaware of the cruel force in his life that apartheid will soon become. With the start of high school in the Cape, Gecko is thrust into a political and personal awakening that is both tragic and heartfelt. With conscription into the South African army looming over him, Gecko’s future is as uncertain as his country’s. Blood Orange evokes the absurdity, longing, and fear of growing up white under apartheid.

Up Against the Night by Justin Cartwright

‘History . . . is seldom able to convey the essence of being human’

Frank McAllister has become wealthy in England, where he has lived for thirty years. He has a house in Notting Hill, a house in the New Forest, and a house near Cape Town. But more and more he feels alienated in England. As the book opens, he is preparing to go to South Africa with his lover, Nellie. He is also waiting anxiously for his daughter, Lucinda, to arrive from California, where she has been in rehab.

Frank is a descendant of the Boer leader, Piet Retief, who was murdered by the Zulu king Dingane, along with all his followers, in 1838. He has been an icon of Afrikaners ever since.

Frank’s Afrikaner cousin, Jaco, has become moderately famous on YouTube for having faced down a huge white shark. He is now in America, where he has joined the Scientologists. His chaotic and violent life spills over on to Frank. He is drawn into a world of violence and delusion that is to threaten the family.

Nineveh by Henrietta Rose-Innes

An elegant and evocative novel about people, place – and pests – by one of South Africa’s most exciting writers.

Katya Grubbs, like her father before her, deals in ‘the unlovely and unloved’. Yet in contrast to her father, she is not in the business of pest extermination, but pest relocation.

Katya’s unconventional approach brings her to the attention of a property developer whose luxury estate on the fringes of Cape Town, Nineveh, remains uninhabited thanks to an infestation of mysterious insects. As Katya is drawn ever deeper into the chaotic urban wilderness of Nineveh, she must confront unwelcome intrusions from her own past.

A masterful novel exploring the tensions between the natural and man-made worlds; the impossibility of imposing order on an organic landscape; and the beautiful chaos of nature.

The Cape Town Book by Nechama Brodie

The Cape Town Book presents a fresh picture of the Mother City, one that brings together all its stories. From geology and beaches to forced removals and hip-hop, Nechama Brodie, author of the best-selling The Joburg Book, has delved deeply into the hidden past of Cape Town to emerge with a lucid and compelling account of South Africa s first city, its landscape and its people. The book s 14 chapters trace the origins and expansion of Cape Town from the City Bowl to the southern and coastal suburbs, the vast expanse of the Cape Flats and the sprawling northern areas. Offering a nuanced, yet balanced, perspective on Cape Town, the book includes familiar attractions like Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch and the Company s Garden, while also giving a voice to marginalised communities in areas such as Athlone, Langa, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha. Many of the images in the book have never been published before, and are drawn from the archives of museums, universities and public institutions. This beautifully illustrated, information-rich book is the defi nitive portrait of the wind-blown, contradictory city at the southern tip of Africa that more than three million people call home.

Mixed Blood by Roger Smith

The two faces of Cape Town: The sunny cosmopolitan part of Cape Town, where europeans hang out without a care: the other side where life is a huge struggle and no way out. Violence is the norm Camps Bay. John Hill, his pregnant wife Susan and their 4-year-old son Matt, are settling down to dinner in their beautiful Cape Town home. The peace is shattered when two armed men burst in on them and grab Susan, threatening her with a gun….

We hope you enjoy our selection of Ten Great Books set in CAPE TOWN. If you think we have missed any, please add them in the Comments below

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