Michiel Heyns's Books

Michiel Heyns: Three Novels in One

By: Michiel Heyns

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Michiel Heyns: Three Novels in One

By: Michiel Heyns

Lost Ground is a richly textured novel set in contemporary South Africa. The murder of a beautiful woman shatters the rural village peace of Alfredville, and her husband, the police station commander, is jailed as chief suspect. Her cousin Peter, a freelance writer in London, returns to South Africa for the first time in decades - unsettled, curious, but also in search of a career-defining story.As Peter abandons the neatly patterned story he had planned and is forced to participate in a community that he once despised, he begins to reconsider his place in the world. In search of Desirée's story, he now starts to rewrite his own - till events take an even more shocking turn... Lost Ground explores questions of xenophobia and prejudice, of national, sexual and personal identity, and what it means to be a foreigner wherever you go. In Invisible Furies Christopher Turner returns to Paris after a thirty-year absence. He is here to extricate his best friend's son Eric from the mercenary machinations of some Parisian gold-digger - or so it is assumed, at home in South Africa. Christopher, with melancholy memories of Paris, is deeply ambivalent about the city; and, as for the young Eric, Christopher remembers him as a brutish lout with little to recommend himself.As Christopher comes to know and enjoy this ambiguous world, he finds his moral categories challenged: is beauty a trap for the innocent young, or a self-validating, even ennobling attribute of a fully lived life? Responding to the gentle appeal of Beatrice, he feels ever more strongly that the young man's place is in Paris with her, rather than on his father's farm in Franschhoek. But Eric has ideas of his own . . . Exploring, as in the widely applauded Lost Ground, the tensions between the fatherland and a larger world, Michiel Heyns turns an ironic eye on the most seductive city on earth, and traces with humour and insight the invisible furies of the heart. In A Sportful Malice a young South African literary scholar, Michael Marcussi, is offered, via a Facebook contact, a house in the Tuscan village of Gianocini, and he accepts with alacrity: this is just the space and quiet he needs to complete his study of Literary Representations of Tuscany. But even before he has boarded his plane at Stansted Airport, things start vexing him: an obnoxious old man jumps the boarding queue, and Michael is given the evil eye by a belligerent bovver boy covered in tattoos. Nor is this to be his last meeting with these objectionable characters: they turn up in unexpected places, first in Florence and then in Gianocini itself, with a frequency that cannot be purely coincidental. In the meantime Michael is pursuing his own extracurricular agenda, through the streets of Florence and the passages of the Uffizi, then through the medieval alleys of Gianocini, only to find himself the object of mysterious designs and the subject of some very disturbing paintings. Add to this the innocent but curious Wouter, the startlingly rude upper-class harridan, Sophronia, the beautiful but supercilious Paolo and a dog called Thanatos: the Tuscan sun never shone on a more bizarre mix. A Sportful Malice is a scintillating tale of love, revenge and trippa.

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Page Count

786

Publisher

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1868427072

ISBN 13

9781868427079

Each Mortal Thing

By: Michiel Heyns

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Each Mortal Thing

By: Michiel Heyns

When Natasha, a novice writer from South Africa, is nominated for a major British literary prize, Terence, a young university lecturer, undertakes to introduce her to the sights of London. However, London and its literary cliques are a far cry from Natasha’s Karoo hometown: through no fault of her own, she is disqualified, and their affair ends in tragedy

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Page Count

232

Publisher

Penguin Random House South Africa

Published Date

ISBN 10

1776380363

ISBN 13

9781776380367

The Typewriter's Tale

A Novel

By: Michiel Heyns

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The Typewriter's Tale

A Novel

By: Michiel Heyns

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.” This is the maxim of celebrated author Henry James and one which his typist Frieda Wroth tries to live up to. Admiring of the great author, she nevertheless feels marginalized and undervalued in her role. But when the dashing Morton Fullerton comes to visit, Frieda finds herself at the center of an intrigue every bit as engrossing as the novels she types, bringing her into conflict with the flamboyant Edith Wharton, and compromising her loyalty to James. The Typewriter’s Tale by Michiel Heyns is a thought-provoking novel on love, art and life fully lived.

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321

Publisher

St. Martin's Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250119014

ISBN 13

9781250119018

Amsterdam's Atlantic

Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil

By: Michiel van Groesen

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Amsterdam's Atlantic

Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil

By: Michiel van Groesen

In 1624 the Dutch West India Company established the colony of Brazil. Only thirty years later, the Dutch Republic handed over the colony to Portugal, never to return to the South Atlantic. Because Dutch Brazil was the first sustained Protestant colony in Iberian America, the events there became major news in early modern Europe and shaped a lively print culture. In Amsterdam's Atlantic, historian Michiel van Groesen shows how the rise and tumultuous fall of Dutch Brazil marked the emergence of a "public Atlantic" centered around Holland's capital city. Amsterdam served as Europe's main hub for news from the Atlantic world, and breaking reports out of Brazil generated great excitement in the city, which reverberated throughout the continent. Initially, the flow of information was successfully managed by the directors of the West India Company. However, when Portuguese sugar planters revolted against the Dutch regime, and tales of corruption among leading administrators in Brazil emerged, they lost their hold on the media landscape, and reports traveled more freely. Fueled by the powerful local print media, popular discussions about Brazil became so bitter that the Amsterdam authorities ultimately withdrew their support for the colony. The self-inflicted demise of Dutch Brazil has been regarded as an anomaly during an otherwise remarkably liberal period in Dutch history, and consequently generations of historians have neglected its significance. Amsterdam's Atlantic puts Dutch Brazil back on the front pages and argues that the way the Amsterdam media constructed Atlantic events was a key element in the transformation of public opinion in Europe.

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272

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081224866X

ISBN 13

9780812248661

Imagining the Americas in Print

Books, Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World

By: Michiel van Groesen

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Imagining the Americas in Print

Books, Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World

By: Michiel van Groesen

In Imagining the Americas in Print, Michiel van Groesen reveals the variety of ways in which publishers and printers in early modern Europe gathered information about the Americas, constructed a narrative, and used it to further colonial ambitions in the Atlantic world (1500–1700). The essays examine the creative ways in which knowledge was manufactured in printing workshops. Collectively they bring to life the vivid print culture that determined the relationship between the Old World and the New in the Age of Encounters, and chart the genres that reflected and shaped the European imagination, and helped to legitimate ideologies of colonialism in the next two centuries.

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Page Count

262

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004348034

ISBN 13

9789004348035

A Poor Season for Whales

By: Michiel Heyns

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A Poor Season for Whales

By: Michiel Heyns

A Poor Season for Whales is pitch-perfect, a clever, bitingly funny novel. It had me riveted.' – Finuala Dowling, author of Okay, Okay, Okay Margaret Crowley, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly fifty-six years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. It was therefore hardly to be foreseen that in her fifty-sixth year she would kill a man with a kitchen knife. When, after twenty-six years of marriage, Margaret Crowley's husband leaves her for a younger man, she has to rethink her priorities and consider her options: as a free agent, with no 'appurtenances', how best to turn that freedom into a meaningful future rather than a mulling over the past? Opting to leave behind her support system of family and friends, she moves to a seaside town with her dog, Benjy, intent upon a simple, uncluttered existence. But simplicity, it seems, can be a complicated affair. When the charismatic young Jimmy Prinsloo-Mazibuko enters her life and her home, apparently intent upon establishing himself as a general-purpose handyman and cook, she finds herself torn between distrust and attraction. Is he merely the helpful, cheerful young man he seems, or is there a darker purpose to his assistance? As in his award-winning Lost Ground, Heyns situates his novel in contemporary South Africa, with a lively cast of characters: Margaret's forthright best friend, Frieda, her loose-limbed son, Carl, her exasperated daughter, Celia, and, most insistently of all, her opinionated 'domestic', Rebecca. Friends and family, it seems, are not to be left behind at will. And new acquaintances may not be what they seem.

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Page Count

333

Publisher

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1776190238

ISBN 13

9781776190232

The Typewriter's Tale

A Novel

By: Michiel Heyns

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The Typewriter's Tale

A Novel

By: Michiel Heyns

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Page Count

321

Publisher

St. Martin's Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250119014

ISBN 13

9781250119018

Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

By: Kathleen Rooney,Jay Baron Nicorvo,Jessica Strawser,Michiel Heyns,Abby Fabiaschi,S. Jae-Jones,Dane Huckelbridge,William Christie

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Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

By: Kathleen Rooney,Jay Baron Nicorvo,Jessica Strawser,Michiel Heyns,Abby Fabiaschi,S. Jae-Jones,Dane Huckelbridge,William Christie

Check out the most exciting new voices that will have their debut novels published by St. Martin's Press.

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Page Count

193

Publisher

Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250144876

ISBN 13

9781250144874

A Sportful Malice

A Comedy of Revenge

By: Michiel Heyns

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A Sportful Malice

A Comedy of Revenge

By: Michiel Heyns

Award-winning novelist Michiel Heyns is back with a darkly comic tale. When a young South African literary scholar, Michael Marcussi, is offered, via a Facebook contact, a house in the Tuscan village of Gianocini, he accepts with alacrity: this is just the space and quiet he needs to complete his study of Literary Representations of Tuscany. But even before he has boarded his plane at Stansted Airport, things start vexing him: an obnoxious old man jumps the boarding queue, and Michael is given the evil eye by a belligerent bovver boy covered in tattoos."--Back cover.

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Page Count

256

Published Date

ISBN 10

1868426203

ISBN 13

9781868426201

The Reluctant Passenger

By: Michiel Heyns

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The Reluctant Passenger

By: Michiel Heyns

Irreverent, satirical and uninhibited, The Reluctant Passenger is a hugely entertaining and intelligent comic novel set in contemporary Cape Town. Nicholas Morris is a fundamentally decent chap who likes order, and isn't given to messy emotions. He and his 'sort-of' girlfriend Leonora share a relationship that is comforting in its sameness, and he is ensconced in a well-paid career as an environmental lawyer. When he takes on a case to save the baboons of Cape Point from developers, he becomes drawn into intrigues involving a charismatic liberal judge, dinosaurs from the old regime and the full cast of the wealthy Tomlinson family, not to mention its golden boy heir. The rainbow nation begins to unravel in a hilarious riot of traffic chaos, ecological mayhem (including a troop of baboons rampaging through a shopping mall) and sexual discovery. Michiel Heyns is one of South Africa's most acclaimed authors, and was until recently Professor of English at the University of Stellenbosch. He is the author of The Typewriter's Tale, The Children's Day, Bodies Politic, Lost Ground and Invisible Furies.

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Page Count

434

Publisher

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1868425010

ISBN 13

9781868425013

Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

By: Kathleen Rooney,Jay Baron Nicorvo,Jessica Strawser,Michiel Heyns,Abby Fabiaschi,S. Jae-Jones,Dane Huckelbridge,William Christie

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Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

By: Kathleen Rooney,Jay Baron Nicorvo,Jessica Strawser,Michiel Heyns,Abby Fabiaschi,S. Jae-Jones,Dane Huckelbridge,William Christie

Check out the most exciting new voices that will have their debut novels published by St. Martin's Press.

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

193

Publisher

Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

1250144876

ISBN 13

9781250144874

Invisible Furies

By: Michiel Heyns

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Invisible Furies

By: Michiel Heyns

After a thirty-year absence Christopher Turner returns to Paris. He is here to extricate his best friend's son Eric from the mercenary machinations of some Parisian gold-digger - or so it is assumed, at home in South Africa. Christopher, with melancholy memories of Paris, is deeply ambivalent about the city; and, as for the young Eric, Christopher remembers him as a brutish lout with little to recommend himself. But both the city and the young man take Christopher by surprise: far from having been corrupted by the place, Eric turns out to have been immeasurably improved by it. The spoilt son has become a considerate and attentive host with charming manners. Furthermore, as Christopher is gradually introduced to Eric's associates, he finds to his dismay that he likes them - likes, above all, the beautiful Beatrice du Plessis, in her day a supermodel, now the mother of a young daughter apparently destined to follow in her mother's footsteps. And Paris exerts her spell anew ... As Christopher comes to know and enjoy this ambiguous world, he finds his moral categories challenged: is beauty a trap for the innocent young, or a self-validating, even ennobling attribute of a fully lived life? Responding to the gentle appeal of Beatrice, he feels ever more strongly that the young man's place is in Paris with her, rather than on his father's farm in Franschhoek. But Eric has ideas of his own ... Exploring, as in the widely applauded Lost Ground, the tensions between the fatherland and a larger world, Michiel Heyns turns an ironic eye on the most seductive city on earth, and traces with humour and insight the invisible furies of the heart. Michiel Heyns is the author of five previous novels: The Children's Day, The Reluctant Passenger, The Typewriter's Tale, Bodies Politic and the critically acclaimed Lost Ground. He is also an award-winning translator. He was until recently professor of English at the University of Stellenbosch.

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Page Count

396

Publisher

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

186842510X

ISBN 13

9781868425105

Imagining the Americas in Print

Books, Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World

By: Michiel van Groesen

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Imagining the Americas in Print

Books, Maps and Encounters in the Atlantic World

By: Michiel van Groesen

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Page Count

262

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004348034

ISBN 13

9789004348035

Amsterdam's Atlantic

Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil

By: Michiel van Groesen

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Amsterdam's Atlantic

Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil

By: Michiel van Groesen

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Page Count

272

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081224866X

ISBN 13

9780812248661

Book's by Michiel Heyns

Michiel Heyns: Three Novels in One

Michiel Heyns: Three Novels in One

Each Mortal Thing

Each Mortal Thing

The Typewriter's Tale

The Typewriter's Tale

Amsterdam's Atlantic

Amsterdam's Atlantic

Imagining the Americas in Print

Imagining the Americas in Print

A Poor Season for Whales

A Poor Season for Whales

The Typewriter's Tale

The Typewriter's Tale

Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

A Sportful Malice

A Sportful Malice

The Reluctant Passenger

The Reluctant Passenger

Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

Winter 2017 St. Martin's First Sampler

Invisible Furies

Invisible Furies

Imagining the Americas in Print

Imagining the Americas in Print

Amsterdam's Atlantic

Amsterdam's Atlantic

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