Tim Krabbé – författare

At the start of the 137-kilometre Tour de Mont Aigoual, Tim Krabbé glances up from his bike to assess the crowd of spectators. ‘Non-racers,’ he writes. ‘The emptiness of those lives shocks me.’ Immediate and gripping from the first page, we race with the author as he struggles up the hills and clings on during descents in the unforgiving French mountains.Originally published in 1978, The Rider is a modern-day classic that is recognised as one of the best books ever written about the sport. Brilliantly conceived and best read at a break-neck pace, it is a loving, imaginative and passionate tribute to the art of cycle racing.

Respectable geologist Egon Wagter has always found the amoral Axel van de Graaf's charisma difficult to resist. But from their first meeting as adolescents on a field trip to Belgium, when three lives became inextricably linked in the caves of La Roche, he has never yet allowed himself to be drawn into his friend's criminal life. Instead he has kept his independence, preferring to learn about Axel's exploits as a drug baron from the papers. Now his life as a family man is in tatters and the escape route offered by an expedition to South America lacks only $40,000 to become a reality. So here he is, far from home in a South East Asian country where the penalty for running drugs is death, running drugs for Axel, but maybe also on the brink of finally understanding the secret of the cave and the love that might have been.