Richard Mason's page-turning sequel to HISTORY OF A PLEASURE SEEKER, the continued adventures of the inimitable Piet Barol ...

A Book of the Year - The Times
A Book of the Year - Observer
A Book of the Year - Mail on Sunday

Avoiding the chaos of the First World War, Piet Barol leaves the bustle of civilization and heads into Africa's greatest forest. With a business to build and secrets to escape, his only weapons are courage and intuition. His African guides have their own reasons for taking him to their ancestral lands. What he finds there changes him forever, and unleashes a chain of events he can neither predict nor control...

This "gorgeous treat of a novel" (The Times, Book of the Month) is a funny, sexy, irreverent, and intensely moving portrait of what unites human beings when their sacred mysteries are blown apart.

"A stunning tour de force that will leave you gripped, moved and inspired. A richly atmospheric historical novel that says much about the way we live now, Who Killed Piet Barol? is a book to read again and again: a compelling story written in luminous prose with vividly-realised characters. This is a book by a serious writer at the height of his powers" - Alex Preston, author of This Bleeding City

"This is one of the finest novels I have read for many years" - Cape Times

"Mason elegantly rotates between characters with wisdom, pathos and real humour" - PRESS ASSOCIATION

"Mason continues to earn his reputation with exquisitely crafted sentences and a dizzying knack for storytelling" - Kirkus Reviews

"With echoes of Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast, Mason unspools a story rich in detail and populated with deeply flawed characters whose lives intersect in the once-pristine forest that inspires acts sacred and profane. Mason handles multiple story lines with the élan of a seasoned raconteur" - Publishers Weekly

"This is a highly original book. Part magic realism, part fable, part history and wholly engrossing" - The Times, Books of the Year

"Exquisite and gripping" - Observer, Books of the Year

"In elegant, sensuous prose ... Mason imbues the forest with life, taking readers inside the psyche of each tree, animal, or insect ... Mason's previous novels have been long-listed for the IMPAC, Sunday Times Literary, and Lambda Literary awards. This profoundly tragic tale, in which colonialism battles tribal customs, and divisions of race and class sow distrust, should put him over the top" - Library Journal, Starred Review

"A perfect example of what makes Mason such a superb writer; his novels tell the rare and profound kind of truth that only stellar fiction can" - Pretoria News

"This riveting tale is set in South Africa in 1914 as a world war looms, and is told from the perspective of both colonial whites and tribal blacks." - MAIL ON SUNDAY

"this is a gorgeous treat of a novel, full of contradictions and subtleties" - THE TIMES

"An ambitious, elegantly written novel with a touch of magic" - National Book Review