Author(s): Neil Sonnekus

NZ Fiction

Len and his father, Son, couldn't be more different. If Len is a recently divorced man of 42 who just wants sex, then his old man is a World War Two veteran in his late 80s, who is impossible. Len is a decadent subeditor at a South African newspaper, the old man is an old-school puritan. They have nothing in common, except that they're both storytellers. Len thinks he's heard all the stories before, but then one day - hungover as usual - he decides to tease a narrative out of the old man. He wants to see if there is more to the endlessly repetitive good-time stories. And slowly the old man starts revealing how just one small, shocking incident actually affected him (and his family) for the rest of his days. The horror of a past war is brought to a head in a country where 50 people - whether children, women or the aged - are murdered not a year, month or week, but a day.