Product Description

A magical novel from a world class writer about a remarkable historical figure.

In his early years, growing up on a Dutch farm in the deep interior of the southern African Cape, Cupido Cockroach became the greatest drinker, liar, fornicator and fighter of his region. Coming under the spell of the soap-boiler Anna, and under the influence of the great Dr Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp of the London Missionary Society, Cupido is made the first Khoi or ‘Hottentot’ missionary ordained at the Cape of Good Hope.

Received into the fold of the Church, Cupido passionately turns against all his early beliefs. After being drawn into the fierce struggle between the missionaries and the Dutch colonists, he rises to some prominence and is appointed as missionary in a remote and arid region in the North-western Cape. But this also marks the beginning of his decline, as the Society abandons him to his fate. One by one, the members of his congregation disappear into the desert, so that in the end, abandoned even by his wife and children, he is left to preach to the stones and thorn trees and tortoises, returning to the dream-world of his people.

In a heady mixture of comedy and tragedy, the real and the magical, and immersed in the ancient, earthy, African world of magic and dreams, Praying Mantis explores through the historical figure of Cupido Cockroach the origins of racial tension in the shadowlands between myth and history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2081750 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-05
• Released on: 2005-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
“From the stones of his country’s rich, tragic, tumultuous history, Brink has built a novel that should nourish his reputation for years to come.”
– Financial Times

“Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Solzhenitsyn: André Brink must be considered with that class of writer.”
– Guardian


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author
André Brink has won South Africa’s most important literary prize, the CAN Award, three times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is Professor of English at the University of Cape Town.