From the author of Book of
the Little Axe, nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a
riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of
history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, DC, and Johannesburg,
South Africa
Prudence Wright seems to have
it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, DC; and the
past glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to
dedicate her days to her autistic son Roland. When she and Davis head out for
dinner with one of Davis's new colleagues on a stormy summer evening filled
with startling and unwelcome interruptions, Prudence has little reason to think
that certain details of her history might arise sometime between cocktails and
the appetizer course.
Yet when Davis's colleague turns out to
be Matshediso, a man from Prudence's past, she is transported back to the
formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an
intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and
Reconciliation hearings, which uncovered the many horrors and human rights
abuses of the Apartheid state, and which fundamentally shaped her sense of
righteousness and justice. But Prudence experienced personal horrors in South
Africa as well, ones she long resolved to keep carefully hidden and ones which
Matshediso threatens now to expose. When Matshediso finally reveals the real
reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her
most deeply held beliefs and to excavate inner reserves of resilience and
strength.
Lauren Francis-Sharma's previous two novels have
established her as a deft chronicler of history and its intersections with
flawed humans struggling to find peace in unjust circumstances. With keen insight
and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines
questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past
and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs.
