Talion: A tragedy
type: CreativeWork
description: Talion is a work of fiction which follows four characters - Freya, whose brother Ben has recently been killed; Slick, a young drug dealer; Abraham, a school teacher; and Nolwazi, a Pretoria police detective - as they deal with the aftermath of a shooting in which they are all involved. Told is short, punchy chapters, the novel follows Freya as she begins to stalk Abraham, who she identifies as her brother's killer, Nolwazi as she tries to solve Ben's murder, a case she cannot give her full attention to, Slick as he tries to maintain his criminality in an increasingly uncontrollable world and Abraham, who must deal with the trauma of his lost family and the desire to protect his only daughter, Sophie. Not a crime novel - Nolwazi will never know the full truth of the case she's been working - but a novel about those who commit crimes and solve them, Talion attempts to capture the dark and messy consequences of grief and revenge, while examining the isolating nature of anger. It is a novel about connections and disconnections, justice and injustice. The novel uses the city as its narrator, hopefully rendering a version of Pretoria not often seen in South African fiction. Written within the spirit of classic tragedy, the tightly controlled plot and heightened tension, as well as the brutal violence, strives to create something more than your average detective novel. A literary and genre hybrid that is both entertaining and unusual, suspenseful and complex.
abstract: Talion is a work of fiction which follows four characters - Freya, whose brother Ben has recently been killed; Slick, a young drug dealer; Abraham, a school teacher; and Nolwazi, a Pretoria police detective - as they deal with the aftermath of a shooting in which they are all involved. Told is short, punchy chapters, the novel follows Freya as she begins to stalk Abraham, who she identifies as her brother's killer, Nolwazi as she tries to solve Ben's murder, a case she cannot give her full attention to, Slick as he tries to maintain his criminality in an increasingly uncontrollable world and Abraham, who must deal with the trauma of his lost family and the desire to protect his only daughter, Sophie. Not a crime novel - Nolwazi will never know the full truth of the case she's been working - but a novel about those who commit crimes and solve them, Talion attempts to capture the dark and messy consequences of grief and revenge, while examining the isolating nature of anger. It is a novel about connections and disconnections, justice and injustice. The novel uses the city as its narrator, hopefully rendering a version of Pretoria not often seen in South African fiction. Written within the spirit of classic tragedy, the tightly controlled plot and heightened tension, as well as the brutal violence, strives to create something more than your average detective novel. A literary and genre hybrid that is both entertaining and unusual, suspenseful and complex.
author: De Vos, Christiaan Frederick Beyers
language: eng
date published: 2017
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:10Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of English Language and Literature

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/25009