Tertius de Klerk: Afrikaner, hapless academic and potential has-been. A drunken
one-night stand with a student, the confrontation, a terrible incident. Tertius must
flee.
Like his great-grandfather Basjan before him, Tertius leaves for Patagonia, the
remote South American region where his forebears started anew after the Anglo-
Boer War. It’s a desperate act, but also an opportunity to seek refuge among longlost
relatives on the windswept plains of the continent’s southernmost tip.
History repeats itself as his spirited wife Alta sets off after him – just as his
great-grandmother Salome pursued the wayward Basjan across ocean and desert.
With a heady mix of adventure and humour, Maya Fowler’s novel spans the
wide Patagonian plains, and transports you to the New World on Spanish soil,
where the Afrikaans language survives to this day.