Gillian Slovo – författare

There was probably only one person who could make Sarah Barcant, successful prosecutor, leave New York and return home to Smitsrivier, the small town in South Africa she left years before. Ben. Her lawyer mentor and inspiration; the man who encouraged her to get out and know the world now needs her back, to help him with one last case, part of the Truth Commission. In the back of a van, handcuffed, Dirk Hendrickes is being driven to the police station where once he was proud to call himself deputy. Later, down the same hot,dry road, will come Alex Mpondo, alternating between cursing Dirk and feeling sick at the idea of facing him, his torturer. And in Smitsrivier: James Sizela, who has passed years waiting for the moment when the man he is certain killed his son, will be forced to tell where the body lies. The people who are about to meet their pasts will not experience the real truth-telling in the court room, at the public show. The real truth will be felt offstage...

When the genteely impoverished and rebellious Evelyn marries the charming Emil, scion of a privileged Sinhalese family, she thinks that her dream of a life in England can now at last come true. So the family travel, with their young son Milton, from Ceylon to Tilbury Docks. But this is England in the 1950s and, no matter how hard Evelyn wishes that it would, England does not take kindly to strangers, especially families who are half black and half white.A profound and moving novel, this is the story about the search to feel at home in your own skin.

Irina Davydovna is a cleaner. She has no time for politics or even for that matter, people: ''rules and rulers may come and go, but dirt never changes.'' Boris Aleksandrovich is a revolutionary. He thinks he understands power. But this is Leningrad in 1933 and Stalin is about to turn against their city. When the life of his beloved daughter Natasha is threatened and his old friend Anton saves a skinny little orphan he finds on a Moscow train, Boris'' faith in his ideals are put to the test. While Irina, watching it all, must learn the power of loyalty and love.''Powerful and moving, Ice Road is a novel whose epic scope never obscures the individual lives that are lived in the shadow of great events. I shall never forget Natasha and Kolya''s love story . . . or Irina, whose sturdy self respect and determination to survive, seems, at times, to speak for an entire people. Gillian Slovo excels in depicting complex human beings, full of passion, love, ambition, self-interest, who are caught up in their country''s history and swept along by it.'' Pat Barker

On 11 September 2001, in a café in London, Ahmed Errachidi watched as the twin towers collapsed. He was appalled by the loss of innocent life. But he couldn’t possibly have predicted how much of his own life he too would lose because of that day.In a series of terrible events, Ahmed was sold by the Pakistanis to the Americans in the diplomatic lounge at Islamabad airport and spent five and a half years in Guantanamo. There, he was beaten, tortured, humiliated, very nearly destroyed.But Ahmed did not give in. This very ordinary, Moroccan-born London chef became a leader of men. Known by the authorities as The General, he devised protests and resistance by any means possible. As a result, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. But then, after all those years, Ahmed was freed, his innocence admitted.This is Ahmed’s story. It will make you rethink what it means to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It will also make you look anew at courage, survival, justice and the War on Terror.

In her powerful new novel, Inheritance, acclaimed author Gillian Slovo delivers a gripping story of family trauma and political reckoning that spans continents and generations.

When Deborah, a successful crime writer, is shattered by her sister Gail’s suicide, she is forced to confront a violent past she has spent a lifetime trying to forget. Their childhood was marked by violence and upheaval: a father murdered in South Africa, a mother imprisoned, and an abrupt exile to England. Now, a mysterious package and a final stipulation in Gail’s will draw Deborah back to the country they once fled. There, amid the lingering shadows of apartheid, she uncovers long-buried secrets that challenge everything she thought she knew about her family — and herself.

As Deborah navigates a landscape shaped by political corruption and fragile reconciliation, she must reckon with the uneasy terrain between truth and justice, memory and self-deception.

Building on a distinguished career that includes the Orange Prize–shortlisted Ice Road and the bestselling memoir Every Secret Thing, Slovo brings her signature psychological acuity and political insight to a richly layered narrative. Inheritance is a profound exploration of how the past endures within us — and how understanding it may be the only path toward forgiveness.