Deon Meyer in the Spotlight

by Ronel S on Dec 19th, 2008

One of the more memorable lines that author Deon Meyer tosses interviewer Neil Sonnekus’ way, for a recent profile of Meyer in the Sunday Times, is: “The only way we’re going to normalise literature in this country is if we write about reality.”

This was in repsonse to Sonnekus’ prodding about the relevance of keeping Meyer’s famous white cop character, Benny Griessel, in action – but the admonishment rings true on many broader literary levels, too.

Meyer’s gruff but friendly person shines through in this very entertaining piece:

You wonder what someone who writes about macho South African men will be like in the flesh, and it’s not just white men he writes about so well.

In arguably Deon Meyer’s best thriller, Proteus (Heart of the Hunter in English), there is Tobela Mpayipheli, an ex-ANC assassin who only wants peace in the new South Africa. But he’s obliged to do someone from the past a favour and ends up having to go on the run in a BMW GS as the country’s entire security force chases him.

Like most of Meyer’s men, he’s been nicely screwed by the system, and this time it’s by his own people. There is Lemmer, the (white) ex- bodyguard with serious anger issues in Onsigbaar, available now as Blood Safari and featuring a black- mamba attack that puts you right there in the rondavel with Lemmer, grabbing anything to block those hissing, venomous strikes.

And then there is the return of one Bennie Griessel in Meyer’s latest crime novel, 13 Uur. Griessel is a Cape-based cop who has to put up with all kinds of personal and bureaucratic crap over the next 13 hours, trying to find a fugitive American girl.

The photographs on the back of Meyer’s novels convey the image of a squat, powerfully built Afrikaner with a brushcut, but it’s the ready smile behind the circular spectacles that gives away the fact that he’s not exactly ex-Recce material.

Not only that; when he arrives for his interview he is dressed in semi-formal slacks, a shirt and pullover — the very picture of the urbane author.