The Long Silence of Mario Salviati - Tapa dura

"1 'A compelling story. The sort of book a reader can get lost in... It is a novel washed in history and lingers afterwards like a memory of a place one might have visited' - Mike Nichol 2 'Van Heerden manages his cast of characters with exemplary skill... Reminiscent of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, it is variously sardonic, amusing and poignant. [A] wonderful novel' - Daily Mail and Guardian 3 'A delicious read... Intriguing' - Cape Argus 4 On ANCESTRAL VOICES: '[He] combines popular readability with literary excellence and profound issues in a manner accomplished by few writers of any nationality' Mail and Guardian 5 'As one cannot talk about Israel without having read Amos Oz, or India without Salman Rushdie, or South America without Marquez or Llosa, so you'll have to read Van Heerden if you wish to understand South Africa.' - Herman de Coninck

When Ingi Friedlander travels to Tallejare in the dry interior of South Africa to purchase a statue, its eccentric sculptor, Jonty Jack, does not want to sell - he says it was not his creation, but appeared one morning as though it had miraculously risen from the ground. As Ingi decides to stay and try to win Jonty's trust, she becomes involved in other quests, as she soon realises that Tallejare is not just a hot, sleepy town, but a world in which stories of love, revenge and greed whirl like dust devils and the past is ever-present. Gradually she realises that the townspeople suspect she has come to seek a different treasure - the legendary wagon of gold brought in by defeated Boer soldiers. But where is it buried? What of the other more macabre cargo that the wagon carried? And what dark secret of the past does deaf and dumb Italian POW, Mario Salviati, have to hide?