We recommend: Till we can keep an animal

"(This) fascinating debut novel was awarded the European Union Literary Award (in 2008)."
"It is the story of Susan, a woman in her fifties who is raped, then shot and killed by robbers in Cape Town."
"Susan relates the story of her death as a kind of omniscient narrator. When she is killed she doesn't go wherever it is dead people go. Instead, she hovers in the world between ours and the next, eavesdropping on the conversations of the living, reminiscing about her life. We, as readers, share in these reminiscences. In a deft way the narrative defies the cliché that dead people don't tell tales."
"The story's narrative poise and control means we are composed about many things that could possibly enrage us, sending us into tantrums. But we don't come out emotionless; Voysey-Braig is much too ruthless to let us go off easily; we feel a kind of a slow-burning, consuming rage at crime, the single biggest blight on South Africa's exemplary democracy."
"Till We Can Keep an Animal is not exactly an easy book to read, both in terms of its narrative structure and its subject. Perhaps it is worth the trouble, for forging a nation from disparate groups and interests is never easy." (Excerpts from a 2009 review by Percy Zvomuya in The Mail & Guardian)