It is a pleasure to share the cover of the French edition of Francois Smith’s second novel, Die kleinste ramp denkbaar.

Translated by Pierre-Marie Finkelstein and published by Actes Sud, the French title is Le plus petit désastre qu’on puisse imaginer and its short description reads:

“Through three days of erratic investigation led by a paranoid country doctor, the turmoil of Afrikaners adrift since the advent of democracy in the country is revealed.”

Die kleinste ramp denkbaar was published to critical acclaim in 2020 by Tafelberg, an imprint of Jonathan Ball Publishers. It was shortlisted for several major Afrikaans literary awards: the ATKV Prose Prize, the kykNET Rapport Fiction Prize and the Jan Rabie Rapport Prize.

In a review Izak de Vries likens the novel to an art film: “Slow, picturesque and devoid of attempts to drag the reader/viewer into any action, but, ultimately, all the striking images are little clues to be followed like breadcrumbs before the birds, an important leitmotif in this novel, eat them up.”

Other reviewers have drawn a parallel to Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, and to the work of renowned South African author, Karel Schoeman. Smith’s prose has been noted as polished and poetic. He uses unassuming but striking images that “burn the inside of the eye”, according to reviewer Jean Meiring, who notes the pleasure to be found in Smith’s sentences and paragraphs.

According to Rob van der Veer, acclaimed Dutch literary translator:

“This is pure literature. It is a book that doesn’t solve everything and even has something enigmatic about it. It is a contemporary novel about a man with his own daily concerns and habits and his own unresolved problems. In essence, it is about the core of being human: who am I and what am I doing here?” 

Quotes from reviews:

“Francois Smith’s second novel is a huge leap forward from his impressive debut, Kamphoer. It is a novel of our time, but one in which the past haunts. I am convinced that it will have a specific place of significance within the development of Afrikaans literature. […] This is not a detective story, although a kind of detective story lies at its core. To me, it’s a character study […]” Kerneels Breytenbach, LitNet

“Ultimately, it is a gripping novel about a man who is forced by unexpected events to confront his own limitations, though it offers no easy explanations or excuses. Even if one reads it as an allegory of the white man’s situation in South Africa, it does not take away from the excellent concreteness with which Van Aardt is portrayed as a fallible and vulnerable person. […] I suspect Die kleinste ramp denkbaar is going to be one of the literary highlights of this strange year.” Louise Viljoen, Rapport

Details

Publication date: 10 August 2020

Pages: 312

World excluding Afrikaans (Tafelberg) and French rights (Actes Sud) available.

English sample translation available

About the author

Francois Smith lectures Afrikaans literature and creative writing at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Before entering academia full-time, he freelanced as a publishing editor. He is the author of Kamphoer [Camp Whore] (Tafelberg, 2014), a bestselling historical novel, widely praised as a literary accomplishment. It was awarded the ATKV Prose Prize in 2015, the SALA for First-time Published author and saw a Dutch, English and French translation follow the original Afrikaans. Smith’s third novel, Die getuienis [The Testimony] (Tafelberg, 2021), won second prize in NB Publishers’ Great Afrikaans Novel Competition in manuscript form and has been published in Dutch translation.