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Nov 05, 2024 By Frank Valish

South African writer, S.J. Naudé’s U.S. debut, translated from the Afrikaans by his friend and fellow writer Michiel Heyns, is the story of one Daniel, a queer journalist living in London who is searching. Daniel is searching for love. He is searching for family. He is searching for belonging.

After he befriends two Serbs in an art museum, the tale takes him to Serbia to visit the pair, where he is nearly duped into spending his savings on the pair, who it turns out are destitute. Daniel travels to South Africa to care for his dying father and ultimately settle his estate, only to find that his father has stipulated in his will that Daniel must spend time with a long-lost cousin, Theon, who lives on a farm in the Free State province. Theon, who had been gravely ill, is now recovered, but it is the son of one of his housekeepers who now has cancer. The pair travel to Japan to obtain an inventive new treatment for the boy. After tragedy strikes, the pair find common ground between themselves and Daniel’s late father in a letter that his father wrote in his younger years mentioning a sexual encounter which he was forced to conceal. A baby is born to another one of the housekeepers’ clan, and Daniel and Theon attempt to adopt the boy after his mother passes in childbirth. The baby is then stolen and it too perishes.

In a brief 214 pages, Fathers and Fugitives feels like several novels in one. The stories blend together furiously, taking the reader on a wild, incomprehensible ride. Ultimately, through the myriad of intersecting tales and characters, Naudé’s novel is one of people. People who are all trying to find themselves, sometimes in the most ill-advised of ways. Across decades, generations, and continents, each character herein is ultimately exploring, grasping, trying to find who they are. But then again, aren’t we all? (www.europaeditions.com)

Author rating: 7/10