BLOOD KIN
Ceridwen Dovey
‘A lovely, haunting novel, written with great care and precision. Working on the level of allegory, with a careful consideration of history and myth, Ceriden Dovey has fashioned a really fine debut.’ Colum McCann ‘Exceptional… An icy, elegant, study of power, and its horribly fascinating perversions’ Christopher Hope This stunning debut novel heralds the arrival of Ceridwen Dovey as a major new literary talent.
A chef, a portraitist and a barber are taken hostage in a coup to overthrow their boss, the President. They are held captive in the President’s Residence in the mountains high above the capital city. Far below them, chaos tears through the streets. The chef’s daughter, the portraitist’s wife and the barber’s lover watch their men from the shadows. In such precarious times, intimate relationships are as dangerous as political ones. As the old order falls, so does the veil that hides the truth about these men and women’s secret passions.
Drawing her readers masterfully towards the novel’s devastating climax, Ceridwen Dovey reveals how humanity’s most atavistic impulses – vanity, vengeance and greed – seethe relentlessly, just beneath the carapace of civilization.
CERIDWEN DOVEY is a writer, film maker and anthropologist. She was born and raised in South Africa, and attended high school in Australia and university in America at Harvard. She is currently completing her PhD at New York University. She is 26 years old.