These Are Not Gentle People

This is a book of profound importance. Through its pages there runs a deep and sympathetic understanding of a troubled country. A masterpiece.

A smartly paced true-crime thriller with a vivid cast of characters … as tense as it is disturbing, richly evoking the mood of a dark, dry place in the heart of South Africa where racial fear lingers, brutal rage flares and everyone remains trapped in the cruel coils of history.

Andrew Harding is one of the great foreign correspondents

Every so often a book comes very close to defining a nation. In this extraordinary, fast-paced and exquisitely written true story, South Africa’s brutal and divided past, its complex present and contested future collide in an explosive narrative of race, class and human cruelty. This is In Cold Blood meets Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Believe me, Andrew Harding has given us an instant classic.

These Are Not Gentle People is a South African tragedy. Page after page reveals the painful truth, that the sun has set on Mandela’s Rainbow Nation … The lives of the characters, from the landless and poor blacks, to the white landowners caught in a vortex of fear and oblivion, are a true reflection of South Africa’s unfinished business - building a country that belongs to all … A gripping and painful read, told with empathy and nuance. These Are Not Gentle People, is an uncomfortable reminder that the past is not over.

[A] searing examination of a small town trying to cope with a trauma that threatens to tear it apart” - Sunday Times (South Africa)

Utterly gripping, timely and shocking