In the midst of a miserable London winter, Antjie Pienaar is trying her best. It’s been six months since her much-lauded historian father died, leaving her with a flat she can’t afford, a collection of useless academic textbooks and a tenuous grasp on reality. She spends her days working reluctantly at a right-wing newspaper, editing articles on inheritance taxes and avoiding the mouse infestation. It’s all very far from the storied future her father imagined for her when they moved to England — which might explain why he always seemed to find her so disappointing.
Then Antjie’s disgraced, oddly charismatic colleague is fired, kicking off a series of strange encounters that lead her through the city’s most gilded rooms. When she’s offered an indecent proposal — one which her father would have despised — Antjie is forced to decide what matters most to her: being good, or making ends meet. Haunted by the great man her father supposedly was, the seams of her identity are slowly picked apart. Memory, history and narrative begin to unravel. Is there really, as he always said, the chance to do the right thing?
Visiting Hours is forthcoming in 2028 from Picador Books in the United Kingdom, and Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in the United States.
