Daka

About the book

Die verdwyning van ’n doodgewone ou wat verskriklike dinge oorgekom het – en ’n nog erger ding aangevang het – en sy drome oor ’n eiland en ’n eienaardige waterwese ... en ’n nuwe begin.

Elke voortvlugtige is ’n ontdekkingsreisiger en elke reisiger ’n vlugteling, en Adam Richter was geen uitsondering nie. Daar was wraak by die dam en ’n storm op die see en smokkelaars en hippies en gewone tortelduiwe en enorme vlermuise, en later ’n hardkoppige rooikop – onder andere.

Sy lewe was nie een lang, uitgerekte verhaal soos die van meeste ordentlike mense nie. Eerder ’n bondel erg teenstrydige stories, in chaos verweef. Van hulle was naïef en onskuldig. Van hulle wreed en donker en verskriklik en selfs boos ... maar van hulle so beautiful soos die bewegings van Lamu se laaste doegong.

Dis moeilik om te glo dat so iemand rêrig bestaan, sou die mense later sê, want vreemde dinge het gebeur. Dinge wat hom soos ’n onsigbare magneet noord sou trek, seelangs, die laaste wildernis in. Want Adam het ’n geheim gehad, so groot dat hy eers moes doodgaan en wegraak voor hy kon opstaan en oor begin.


======


ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The disappearance of an ordinary guy who had some terrible things happen to him – and who started an even worse thing – and his vivid dreams about an island and a peculiar water creature... and a new beginning.

Every fugitive is an explorer and every traveller a refugee, and Adam Richter was no exception. There was revenge at the dam and a storm at sea and smugglers and hippies and common turtledoves and enormous bats, and later a stubborn redhead – among other things.

His life was not one long, drawn-out story like the lives of most ordinary people were. It was rather a strange bundle of wildly contradictory stories, interwoven with chaos. Some of them were naive and innocent. Some of them cruel and dark and terrible and even evil... but some of them were as beautiful as the movements of Lamu’s last dugong.

It is hard to believe that such a person really existed, people would later say, because strange things happened. Things that would draw him north like an invisible magnet, along the coastline and into the last wilderness. Because Adam had a secret so big that he first had to disappear and die before he could get up and begin again.