A courageous self-assessment... interesting and pivotal... done with sincerity and intelligence

Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Andre Brink must be considered with that class of writer

One of South Africa's most eloquent literary voices

One of South Africa's most distinguished writers and a key figure in the modernisation of the Afrikaans novel

The best novel is a book that, to my shame, I have only just read. Visiting Vienna earlier in the year, I realised how little I knew about the Austro-Hungarian empire. So I read Joseph Roth's 1932 book The Radetzky March (Penguin Classics) and, as soon as I finished reading it, I read it all over again.

'Delights, amuses, moves and angers you with the lightest of touches. It is, as might be said of Cadence herself, a small masterpiece'

'Wonderful, funny, poignant and gutsy...you can feel the author's huge and hurt and loving heart beat on every page'

'An intensely enjoyable novel about friendship and prejudice: the dialogue is word perfect, the psycology laser fine, and there are some terrific jokes... but no synopsis can do justice to this glorious book'