Malla Nunn: Present Darkness
I haven’t read Malla Nunn since her first book, A Beautiful Place to Die, a beautifully written novel. In that book she establishes her three central characters: Emmanuel Cooper, a white policeman; Shabalala, a Zulu policeman; and a Jewish doctor, Zweigman. The books are set in 1950’s South Africa, which makes all of these relationships loaded. In the first book the heaviness of the connections almost overwhelm the story. In this novel, Nunn’s fourth, the characters are established and comfortable and the story being told can run on its own steam.