Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This allegorical novel transports readers to an unspecified time in the history of an unnamed country that represents South Africa. Like his contemporaries J. M. Coetzee and Salmon Rushdie, Nicol adopts the style of the parable and the folk tale both to address current political realities and to interrogate the nature of narrative. While many such 'postmodern' nonsequential, fragmented fictions engage the readers' attention and communicate clearly complex and subtle meanings, Nicol's narrative of the events surrounding the conflict between a charismatic village prophet and a powerful state president tends to confuse and to frustrate the reader. But the bewildering story includes some moving moments and represents especially well the ways in which this disenfranchised South African village society attempts to disempower its own women." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
With tremendous political daring, South African novelist Mike Nicol offers a luminous parable of his country's past. Bawdy and terrifying, fantastical yet eerily familiar,
This Day and Age realizes the prophecy told to a newly elected president on the eve of his inauguration. After years of bountiful harmony will come plague and famine, during which a strange man-child with a Bible chained to his wrist and his army of the disenfranchised will gather strength in the most remote reaches of the land.
"Mike Nicol joins the roster . . . of Franz Kafka, Mikhail Bulgakov, Ryszard Kapuscinski, and the magical realists of Latin America."--The New York Times Book Review