These Are Not Gentle People
A tense and pacy true-crime thriller
by Andrew Harding
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Pub Date Oct 01 2020 | Archive Date Jan 12 2021
Quercus Books | MacLehose Press
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Description
NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
"Utterly gripping, timely and shocking" PHILIPPE SANDS
"Compelling and disturbing . . . quietly devastating" DAMON GALGUT
"This is a book of profound importance . . . A masterpiece" ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
"A vintage crime story . . . an extraordinary tale . . . It is written as a drama, part thriller, part tragedy" ALEC RUSSELL, Financial Times
"A smartly paced true-crime thriller with a vivid cast of characters . . . as tense as it is disturbing" JOHN CARLIN, author of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
Two dead men. Forty suspects. The trial that broke a small South African town
"Look what the fucking dogs did to them, someone muttered. No-one mentioned the rope, or the monkey-wrench, or the gun, or the knife, or the stick, or the whip, or the blood-stained boots. In fact, no-one said much at all. It seemed simpler that way. There was no sense in pointing fingers.'"
At dusk, on a warm evening in 2016, a group of forty men gathered in the corner of a dusty field on a farm outside Parys in the Free State. Some were in fury. Others treated the whole thing as a joke - a game. The events of the next two hours would come to haunt them all. They would rip families apart, prompt suicide attempts, breakdowns, divorce, bankruptcy, threats of violent revenge and acts of unforgivable treachery.
These Are Not Gentle People is the story of that night, and of what happened next. It's a courtroom drama, a profound exploration of collective guilt and individual justice, and a fast-paced literary thriller.
Award-winning foreign correspondent and author Andrew Harding traces the impact of one moment of collective barbarism on a fragile community - exploding lies, cover-ups, political meddling and betrayals, and revealing the inner lives of those involved with extraordinary clarity.
The book is also a mesmerising examination of a small town trying to cope with a trauma that threatens to tear it in two - as such, it is as much a journey into the heart of modern South Africa as it is a gripping tale of crime, punishment and redemption.
When a whole community is on trial, who pays the price?
Advance Praise
"Utterly gripping, timely and shocking" PHILIPPE SANDS
"This is a book of profound importance . . . A masterpiece" ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
"A smartly paced true-crime thriller with a vivid cast of characters . . . as tense as it is disturbing" JOHN CARLIN, author of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781529405583 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 288 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Tilly F, Reviewer
The story of a shocking true crime which tore a South African community apart. Although this is true crime, Harding’s writing makes it feel almost like a work of fiction as it has such great pace and keeps you turning the page to find out what happens next. I found I was grateful for this as the violence and brutality of the crime is hard to come to terms with as something that not just one, but 40 human beings can do to another.
I found one of the most heartbreaking things was the fact that so many people involved didn’t even bother to differentiate between the two victims, and when researching further I found multiple news articles with incorrect names for the victims - as though they don’t even deserve their own identities after the indignity they have already suffered.
With so much focus on America’s racial tensions at the moment, this is an essential read to show that racism is all too alive even in a country where Apartheid ended over 25years ago. A brutal, compelling read - be prepared to spend a lot of time searching the news for updates after reading this, as it stays with you.
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