The Fall of the Black-Eyed Night

Using the fictive setting of the upmarket Bay Regal Hotel in a very recognisable Cape Town, this novel brings several lives together in dramatic and unusual combinations. Through the main character, Shehzad Shadhili, son of an imam, it expresses a sense of dislocation and shame that can be traced to two episodes in Shehzad’s past in London at the time of the July 2005 Islamist bombings in the city. Shehzad’s return to Cape Town means having to engage with family and Muslim mores, as well as growing responsibility for a 17-year-old German girl orphaned by the death of her father, a resident at the hotel. Inspired by the turn of events in the Muslim community, he implements a cunning idea for revenge and finds himself in a tangle of relationships and an unexpected outcome. This is an intriguing, deeply thoughtful and surprisingly tender-hearted novel, a vibrant example of contemporary South African fiction.