In the week of the US publication of ICARUS by Grove Atlantic, we’re celebrating a plethora of new deals for international bestselling author Deon Meyer, with translation rights sold to Le Seuil in France, Aufbau in Germany, Bruna in Holland, Edizioni E/O in Italy and Tiden Norsk in Norway. ICARUS has already been published in SA, by NB books (where it earned widespread recognition by holding on to the top spot of charts for several weeks and selling over 40,000 copies) and Hodder in the UK, with amazing reviews including those listed below.
Deon Meyer will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair before embarking on a 10-city European tour throughout Germany (where several events have already sold out) and then on to Prague, Cracow and Warsaw. He was also in Italy at the Salerno Crime Festival this summer, where he was warmly received. You can check details of Deon’s events on his website.
This novel witnesses the return of Benny Griessel, struggling to stay sober, and bruised by a policeman friend’s terrible suicide. Yet the discovery of a body buried beneath the sand dunes north of Cape Town will test his willpower even further. Why was notorious Ernst Richter, MD of a new tech startup, Alibi targeted? How exactly is a service that creates false appointments, documents and phone calls to enable people to cheat on their partners, linked to this high profile murder? With all eyes on Benny’s pursuit to uncover the truth, he will battle not just to track down the killer, but against the siren call of the whiskey bottle as well.
Deon Meyer lives in Cape Town. His books are published in 27 countries, and have been awarded many prizes around the world: the Deutsche Krimi Prize in Germany, the ATKV Prize in South Africa, and Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Le Prix Mystère de la Critique in France. His novel THIRTEEN HOURS was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger, and HEART OF THE HUNTER, was longlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Prize and selected as one of Chicago Tribune's '10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2004'. Most recently, COBRA was shortlisted for the 2015 CWA International Dagger.
Praise for ICARUS:
‘Deon Meyer, who writes in Afrikaans, has long been hailed as South Africa's greatest crime writer. ICARUS places him firmly in the top international league. It's the fifth, and best, of the Benny Griessel series... One of Meyer's strengths is his ability to portray lesser characters with as much attention as he pays to central ones... Meyer scores also in his sensitive portrayals of the social and racial elements of a South Africa still struggling to find its equilibrium.’ – Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘Deon Meyer’s South Africa is laid bare in ICARUS […] it is as glittering and hard as the diamonds his country is famous for. […] Meyer utilises the crime fiction genre as an apparatus to create a multifaceted, unsparing picture of his country.’ – The Independent
‘Excellent … The richness of the characters, especially the multifaceted Benny, elevates this above most contemporary police procedurals.’ – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review