Absolution

Patrick Flanery

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Absolution won the Spear's First Best Book Award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Guardian Book Award, and the Green Carnation Prize, and was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In her garden, ensconced in the lush vegetation of the Western Cape, Clare Wald, world-renowned author, mother, critic, takes up her pen and confronts her life. Sam Leroux has returned to South Africa to embark upon a project that will establish his reputation - he is to write Clare's biography. But how honest is she prepared to be? Was she complicit in crimes lurking in South Africa's past; is she an accomplice or a victim? Are her crimes against her family real or imagined? In the stories she weaves and the truth just below the surface of her shimmering prose, lie Sam's own ghosts.