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Up Against the Night

Up Against the Night

by Justin Cartwright (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2015

    $3.28
Synopsis

`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. Justin Cartwright possesses that rarest of novelist's skills - the ability to create fiction which is intensely serious but which also vividly encompasses the absurdity and comedy of life. Up Against the Night is a subtle, brilliant novel about South Africa, its beautiful, superbly evoked landscape, its violent past and its uncertain present. Justin Cartwright is a descendant of Piet Retief.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 256
 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 27 Aug 2015
ISBN 10: 1408858223
ISBN 13: 9781408858226
Book Overview: From Whitbread Novel Award-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Justin Cartwright comes an intimate exploration of one man's relationship with South Africa and its turbulent history

Media Reviews
Justin Cartwright is one of our best novelists * Daily Telegraph *
Few living British novelists write English fiction quite as well as Cartwright * Eileen Battersby, Irish Times *
One of our finest novelists * Independent *
This is Cartwright at his best, delivering a strong story with skill and feeling * Mail on Sunday *
Cartwright is as accomplished as anyone writing fiction today * Scotsman *
He's very good. He has such control, every sentence. Such ease. -- Jim Crace * Irish Times *
A story where emotions are inescapably linked to the land of one's birth and paradise is spoilt by the worm in the bud. Brilliant * the Lady *
Cartwright's writing is coolly elegant and laconic ... and there are vivid historical flashbacks, cleverly imagined * The Times *
The tension is maintained between Frank's elegiac internal monologues, the dramatic beauty of South Africa and the brief interludes when we hear the deluded Jaco's voice. Celebration is undermined by horror but in this intriguing novel, Cartwright says that is the nature of South Africa * Express *
Rich and strange ... Up Against the Night with its subversive mix of tenderness and terror, is a rare novel that gets South Africa right -- Christopher Hope * Guardian *
In this fine novel, Justin Cartwright proves once again just why he is among the foremost novelists in the English language ... This is an elegantly written, cleverly plotted and many layered novel -- Donal O'Donoghue * RTE Guide *
As always, Cartwright draws you into his characters' lives, the smug security of wealth undermined by the lurking threat of violence. This is up there with his best * Daily Mail *
The master of the erudite soft touch, Cartwright is on masterly form * Monocle *
[a] juxtaposition of beauty and savagery * Bookist *
Evoking Coetzee's Disgrace and Gordimer's The House Gun, Cartwright brings new twists and a sure touch to his tragicomedy about a decent man's rude awakening to shared history's capricious side. * Kirkus *
Wryly witty and drily critical of the political powers-that-be, Cartwright - in person and on the page - hits his satirical targets with a satisfying ping * Irish Times *
Combines beauty, joy, and foreboding * Publisher's Weekly *
Cartwright's tale of the confrontation of national and personal identities is unblinking - at times beautiful and full of love, at others, lonely and desperate * Historical Novel Society *
Cartwright's characterisation is excellent and he writes observantly about a society where violence is never far beneath the surface * Mail on Sunday *
Author Bio
Justin Cartwright's novels include the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers, the acclaimed White Lightning, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award, The Promise of Happiness, selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club and winner of the 2005 Hawthornden Prize, The Song Before It Is Sung, To Heaven By Water, Other People's Money, winner of the Spears novel of the year and, most recently, the acclaimed Lion Heart. Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and lives in London. @justincartwrig1