Extract from Eben Venter’s New Novel, Wolf, Wolf

In acclaimed writer Eben Venter’s latest novel, Wolf, Wolf, he examines the relationship between a dying father and his gay son. Read an extract from the book, made available by NB Publishers, in which the father, Benjamin Duiker, insists that his son, Mattheüs, moves him from his sickbed to his study, from where he plans to meet death.

At one o’clock on the dot he walks into the room with a tray of food for his dying father. Privately he uses the word dying in lower case – unlike the oncologist who rubs it in: I give your father another month or so. He’s also taking along a request that he may be ashamed of. And yet he will – he wants to – ask his father for the cheque so that he can start his own business. Every word has been sifted and weighed; and lunch is tomato and lamb stew, his father’s favourite.

He’s surprised to find the old man propped up already, his back against two cushions – the willpower that must have taken. Without preamble, the voice issues from the decrepit body, forceful and peremptory, just as he remembers it. Pa wants to be moved from the bedroom to the study. Irrespective of Mattheüs’s opinion concerning his condition.

• Keep reading: NB Publishers (pdf download)

Book details

• Wolf, Wolf by Eben Venter
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  EAN: 9780624055341
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