Immorality Act

Description

Cape Town, in the 1960s. Love across the colour bar is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.

John Terreblanche, a police reporter seeking redemption, tells the story of a Xhosa nurse, Promise Madiba, a Dutch doctor, Willem Jansen, and a Malay prostitute, Marja de Koning, who engage in a passionate love triangle in the shadow of the Sharpeville massacre, as South Africa lurches to independence from Great Britain.

Violent yet tender, Immorality Act spans from Indonesia to Cape Town and is a moving account of the impact of apartheid, racism and colonialism on lives in the twentieth century, as well as a celebration of the ungovernability of the human spirit.

Dr Berend Mets was born in Indonesia of Dutch parents, and amongst other countries grew up in apartheid South Africa where he became a doctor, anaesthetist and scientist. He came to fiction through an MFA degree after a career of medical, historical and scientific writing. Berend is a Professor of Anesthesiology at the Pennsylvania State University and divides his time between America, the Dutch Caribbean, and Cape Town, South Africa.