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The Keeper

ISBN 
9780143531517
Format 
Epub
Recommended Price 
R210.00
Published 
September 2014
About the book: 

When lighthouse keeper Hannes Harker is posted to a remote island with his young wife, he discovers something long-hidden in the tower that causes him to lose his footing and fall. Seriously injured, Hannes is evacuated to hospital and nursed back to health by Sister Rika, to whom he haltingly tells the story of his life: of his mother’s mysterious death, of his wild young wife, Aletta, and of the desolate island inhabited only by the lighthouse keepers and guano workers – two communities confined together, yet rigidly separated in one of the bleakest places on earth. With the arrival of a figure from Aletta’s past, her own secrets erupt into the present, just as the simmering tensions and injustices endured for so long by the guano workers erupt into a single, shocking act of violence.

Written in the exquisite, haunting prose for which Marguerite Poland is renowned, The Keeper is the story of two generations of lighthouse keepers – men obsessed by their duty to the light – and the wives who accompany them into a life of frightening isolation.

The Keeper is a novel about the power of secrets, the power of love, and the power of stories.

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About the Author
Marguerite Poland has successfully and eloquently mastered writing for both children and adults. Her landmark 1979 book  The Mantis And The Moon  is credited with establishing a market for indigenous children’s books in English in South Africa. Poetic, sensitively-layered and lucid, Poland’s novels for adults have won several prestigious awards. A meticulous researcher, she has also written a number of academic papers and reports.
 
Fluent in Xhosa and isiZulu, much of Poland’s work reflects her interest in African culture with some of her childrens stories in particular inspired by African oral traditions. Her keen understanding and appreciation of the South African landscape, its fauna and flora, as well as its peoples, is colourfully evident in her writing.
 
Married with two daughters, Marguerite Poland spends her time between Grahamstown and Durban.

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