User:Manudouz/sandbox/Devil's Peak

Devil's Peak is a crime novel written by South African thriller novelist, Deon Meyer. Its Afrikaans title is Infanta, and it has been translated into English by ??? Madeleine van Biljon. This novel inaugurates a series of several detective novels whose hero is Inspector Benny Griessel.

In this bestselling thriller, the author brings together history, that of the apartheid system, and politics, that of South Africa in Angola.

This book won a coveted international prize, the France’s Prix Mystère de la critique. It has also been the basis of Orion, a series for television.

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Plot summary
Thobela Mpayipheli is a former Stasi agent who hangs up to take care of his adopted son Pakamile. When he is killed, Thobela has only one idea in mind: to do justice and to hunt down all the torturers of children across the country. Inspector Griessel, a notorious alcoholic, takes care of the investigation, but he also has to deal with his family problems and with Christine, a newly met prostitute who fears for her child.

The plot alternates between the chapters written in the third person and describing the step-by-step investigations, and those written in the first person and detailing the history of the personal life of Zet van Heerden. This character is like a vindicator showing us that no one holds a single truth, and that coexistence with former enemies is difficult.

In parallel, the reader discovers the life of Thobela Mpayipheli, a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe — the armed wing of African National Congress — sent to the former Soviet Union and East Germany to be trained as an assassin.

Quotation
In a dialogue with Hope (Beneke), a sentence summarizes how between Zet (van Heerden), the main character, oscillates between positive and negative feelings. 'My mother is an artist. That's her work.' He pointed to the wall. 'She creates beautiful paintings. She looks at the world and she makes it more beautiful on canvas. I think it's her way of distancing herself from the evil that is in all of us.' (Day 4 — Sunday, 9 July).