Blood Orange A Novel

Troy Blacklaws’s follow-up to his internationally acclaimed Karoo Boy is the bittersweet tale of a South African boy coming of age during apartheid
Gecko’s childhood is one of sheltered, almost magical innocence on a farm in Natal. He spends his days taking barefoot expeditions with his dogs and his nights listening to Springbok Radio, unaware of the cruel force in his life that apartheid will soon become. With the start of high school in the Cape, Gecko is thrust into a political and personal awakening that is both tragic and heartfelt. With conscription into the South African army looming over him, Gecko’s future is as uncertain as his country’s. Blood Orange evokes the absurdity, longing, and fear of growing up white in the last decades of apartheid.

Troy Blacklaws is a South African writer whose work uses the lens of his own boyhood to illuminate the reality of living under apartheid. After moving from Natal, South Africa, to the Cape with his family at the age of nine, Blacklaws learned the truth behind the divisions in his country, first as a student at Paarl Boys’ High and then as a draftee for the army, where he spent two bitter years as an objector. Shortlisted for the Prix Femina for Karoo Boy, Blacklaws is a graduate of Rhodes University and has taught at international schools in Frankfurt, Vienna, and Singapore. He now lives and teaches in Luxembourg.