Paul Auster meets Samuel Beckett in Dry Remains, a literary detective story and dazzlingly macabre anti-biography, co-written by one of South Africa's most celebrated authors.
"I am not a good man," the Protagonist wrote in one of his many notebooks.
The body of an old man is found in a remote South African village. Two detectives are sent to investigate, observe and meticulously catalogue its slow decomposition. Listening to the echoes that linger in the Protagonist's disintegrating mind and poring over his handwritten notebooks and letters, they probe ever deeper into his life as it unfolded over the years. What they are looking for are explanations for the gradual decay of his moral fibre, the apparent withering away of his ability to do right.
A haunting osmosis of fact and fiction, Dry Remains represents the coming together of two authors - one at the beginning of life, the other at the end - to take an unflinching and hopelessly human look at a life and its consequences. And at the possibility of dying, nonetheless, with a smile on one's face.
Paul Auster meets Samuel Beckett. Dry Remains is both literary detective story and dazzlingly macabre anti-biography, co-written by one of South Africa's most celebrated authors.
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Athol Fugard
Athol Fugard is a renowned playwright, director and occasional actor. His work spans the period of apartheid through the first democratic elections, and into present-day South Africa. He has written close to forty plays, including Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, "Master Harold" ... and the boys, The Road to Mecca, The Train Driver, and The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek. His most recent play (co-written with Paula Fourie), Concerning the Life of Babyboy Kleintjies, will be premiered in Stellenbosch in late 2022. Many of his works have been turned into films: Tsotsi, based on his 1980 novel of the same name, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. One of the most performed playwrights in the world, Athol is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award and the prestigious Praemium Imperiale global arts prize for Theatre/Film awarded by the Japan Art Association. At 90, he continues to write from his cottage in the Cape Winelands, South Africa, where he lives with his wife, Paula Fourie.
Paula Fourie
Born in 1985 to a family in the diplomatic service, Paula Fourie spent the majority of her childhood in Europe and the US, returning to South Africa without having witnessed first-hand the turbulent final years of apartheid. She went on to receive her BMus and MMus degrees from the University of Pretoria and her PhD from Stellenbosch University. Today, she holds fellowships at the Bern University of the Arts and the Africa Open Institute at Stellenbosch University.
Paula is the author of Mr Entertainment: The Life of Taliep Petersen, forthcoming in September 2022 with LAPA, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa. She is also an occasional theatre director and the co-author (with Athol Fugard) of the play Concerning the Life of Babyboy Kleintjies, scheduled for a premiere in Stellenbosch in late 2022. Her poetry has appeared in several journals including New Contrast, Stanzas and New Coin.
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