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"The Filmmaker's Apprentice and Other Stories" is a novella and six short stories set in a contemporary South Africa more complicated than ever, where people are constantly moving, young people are trying to forge identities and an older generation struggles to adapt to a radically altered reality. Characters struggle to relate meaningfully across socioeconomic, gender, national and racial divisions, bumping up against their own prejudices and perceptions in a way that makes it difficult to really see each other.

Wonderboom (Wondertree) could be considered as a dystopic novel that takes place in a post-apocalyptic era within the South African landscape. It is the time of disillusioned citizens and access to most resources is limited, except for the plutocrats. The result is that the division between the haves and have-nots is more severe than ever before and is particularly evident along the fringes of society. The protagonist, Magriet Vos, is a fifty-year-old violinist whose memory is disintegrating. Due to the fact that she is a regular performer at the ‘court’ of the despotic ruler Albino X, her impending mental incompetence pitches her at a knife’s edge, because when she will no longer be able to master her art, Albino X will have her killed and dispatched to the taxidermist in order to extend his diorama. Further to this, she has virtually no friends or relatives left in the coastal village where she lives, and she is thus compelled to migrate north, back to the Magaliesberg and the last members of her clan. Vos raids her past in a desperate attempt to survive the post-revolutionary wasteland in the hope of arriving ‘home’ safely. The text fluctuates between the territory of memoir and travelogue as the journey progresses and her sense of consciousness starts to dissipate. Aspects of her musical craft, such as rhythm, tone and tempo are synthesised in the structure of the novel. Further to this, careful consideration was given to references to existing texts by particular authors, serving the purpose of either parody or elegy. Vos’ journey commences in Betty’s Bay on the southern coast of South Africa and unfolds through four voices or perspectives: - The main narrator (illuminating the idiosyncratic viewpoint of Magriet Vos) - Magriet’s diary (memoir) - Encyclopedia (endnotes) - Disintegrating photo texts: a series of constructions/collages, which serves as introduction to each chapter and refers to the ‘image sequence’ of the British photographer Eadweard James Muybridge (1830-1904) and which is here applied as dismantling device to allow text and image to dovetail. The tree serves as central metaphor − both as axis in nature and as archaic source of ‘knowledge of good and evil.’

From the cold shores of Marion Island to the plains of the Great Karoo, this is a story about four South Africans, by birth or circumstance, who are marooned on the outskirts of society and trying to find their way back. Livhu is a scientist who has been sent to a remote research station to study ocean currents. Besides the challenge of adjusting to the frozen island landscape, she also grapples with her feelings for a young seal researcher. When the relationship takes an unwanted turn, Livhu is forced to search deep inside herself and find the strength to survive a lonely year very far from home. Casper is a sub-editor who works for the most trashy tabloid in Johannesburg. He’s on cruise control, plugging away at a job he doesn’t really enjoy, full of regret about previous opportunities he thinks he’s squandered. When a strange assignment comes his way, and a new friend with it, he sees the hazy outline of a map that will lead him away from previous hurt towards a brighter, more ambitious future. Garrick is a ski-boat skipper from Durban. He once captained cargo ships, but when his family fell apart and the rum took over, this was the only job he could get. Now he has a rare opportunity to make good money delivering a catamaran to the Seychelles and rekindle the bond with his estranged son at the same time. On the open ocean, however, tempers fray under skies brimming with thunderclouds, and the threat of pirates is ever present. Jamal walked out of war-torn Somalia as a teenager with his brother. Now his brother has been killed in a xenophobic attack in a Johannesburg township and Jamal is all alone. With no other prospects, he carries on walking, south towards Cape Town, where he has a cousin who might be able to help him. Along the way, desperate and dehydrated, he is taken in by an elderly loner in a small Karoo town who has secrets of his own. Unbeknownst to each other, the lives of these four strangers will touch each other in unexpected ways, suggesting that we are all closer than we’d like to admit, held together by the universal desire for redemption.

This dissertation consists of a short novel, Sea Creatures of the Southern Deep, accompanied by a preface. In the preface, I discuss some aspects of my own experience that have influenced the text. I also outline the development of the manuscript, illustrating the process of revision with excerpts from drafts of the novel. The novel itself is an account of a woman's loss and eventual recovery of a childhood vitality and sense of self. The story follows a protagonist, Anna (initially Joanna), from fearless childhood through troubled youth to adulthood. Through this narrative, I examine themes of loss, desire and identity within sexual and non-sexual relationships. After an opening passage describing an episode in childhood, the story finds Joanna at high school. Her ambivalent friendship with a classmate, Leah, and infatuation with a teenage boy, Robbie, are described. This section culminates in Robbie's drowning and Leah's disappearance. Subsequently, Joanna / Anna attends art school, where she starts an intense relationship with an older man, Alan. Her almost voyeuristic fascination with Alan is mirrored by her job photographing animals at the aquarium. Throughout, the sea and sea creatures signify those things that Anna both desires and fears. Leah returns, moves in with Anna, and eventually seduces Alan. Anna takes revenge by creating a photographic collage; through this act she symbolically "kills" her lover. In doing so, she frees herself from a damaging relationship, and is able to re- enter her life rejuvenated.

Talion is a work of fiction which follows four characters - Freya, whose brother Ben has recently been killed; Slick, a young drug dealer; Abraham, a school teacher; and Nolwazi, a Pretoria police detective - as they deal with the aftermath of a shooting in which they are all involved. Told is short, punchy chapters, the novel follows Freya as she begins to stalk Abraham, who she identifies as her brother's killer, Nolwazi as she tries to solve Ben's murder, a case she cannot give her full attention to, Slick as he tries to maintain his criminality in an increasingly uncontrollable world and Abraham, who must deal with the trauma of his lost family and the desire to protect his only daughter, Sophie. Not a crime novel - Nolwazi will never know the full truth of the case she's been working - but a novel about those who commit crimes and solve them, Talion attempts to capture the dark and messy consequences of grief and revenge, while examining the isolating nature of anger. It is a novel about connections and disconnections, justice and injustice. The novel uses the city as its narrator, hopefully rendering a version of Pretoria not often seen in South African fiction. Written within the spirit of classic tragedy, the tightly controlled plot and heightened tension, as well as the brutal violence, strives to create something more than your average detective novel. A literary and genre hybrid that is both entertaining and unusual, suspenseful and complex.

Human bones are discovered on the farm Hebron near Swaziland where two old women, Catherine and Maria, live. Their memories are stirred and disturbed by the discovery. Two young girls weave a close bond of friendship on the farm. Their childhood promises made in the tin church on the hill above Hebron are to have lasting repercussions on the shape of their lives. The church becomes their haven where they know they can always find each other. When Catherine's parents split up, and Catherine is taken to England, Maria still goes to the church, for there she is close to Catherine, and can see visions of her far away.

Me. Watch me. It's me. Can you see me? Look I am running now, and I can run fast, as fast as a car, you don't believe me? Watch me. Now, I am going to throw this ball to you, are you going to catch it? Catch it. Don't let it fall. Don't let it fall.

With Strange Aeons is a contemporary diaspora story of alienation and stark choices. Wome, a quiet Cameroonian university graduate has just moved to New York City from Rhode Island to take up a job. There, he meets Shokare, a combative nonconformist who challenges him to break free of the "African bubble" to which Wome has begun to attach himself. Not wholly persuaded, Wome is nevertheless drawn by Shokare's charisma and eclecticism. Wome's eyes are opened to the energy and possibilities of life in 1990s NewYork and, despite his shyness he becomes involved with a Canadian woman, which further complicates his sense of belonging.