ICARUS by bestselling South African author Deon Meyer is published in the UK in paperback today by Hodder & Stoughton. Published in Afrikaans in 2015 by Human & Rousseau, ICARUS immediately shot to Number 1 in South Africa, and has just been shortlisted for the Nielsen Bookseller’s Choice Award.
Published in the US by Grove Atlantic, the novel is also sold to Le Seuil in France, Aufbau in Germany, Edizioni E/O in Italy, Tiden Norsk in Norway, Sonia Draga in Poland, Salamandra in Spain and Bruna in Holland, where Deon has also recently been announced as the author of the Crime and Thriller Book Weeks 2017. Meyer, who has been described by the Times as “One of the sharpest thriller writers around”, broke through in the Netherlands in 2012 with THIRTEEN HOURS, which was awarded the VN Thriller of the Year award.
Deon Meyer has been in Poland for the premiere of the TV series CAPE TOWN, based on his DEAD BEFORE DYING and its character Mat Joubert, and will visit the UK for the Harrogate Crime Festival from the 21st to the 24th of July, where he will be appearing at the Murder Out of Africa event on Saturday 23rd. Deon has also been invited to attend Mantova’s Festivaletteratura, one of the biggest Italian literary festivals, in September.
ICARUS witnesses the return of Benny Griessel, struggling to stay sober, and bruised by a policeman friend’s terrible suicide. Yet the discovery of a body buried beneath the sand dunes north of Cape Town will test his willpower even further. Why was notorious Ernst Richter, MD of a new tech start-up, Alibi targeted? How exactly is a service that creates false appointments, documents and phone calls to enable people to cheat on their partners, linked to this high profile murder? With all eyes on Benny’s pursuit to uncover the truth, he will battle not just to track down the killer, but against the siren call of the whiskey bottle as well.
Deon’s new novel KOORS (FEVER in English) will be published in South Africa in Afrikaans in August 2016 by Tafelberg, with a major press campaign. It will be published in English and translation elsewhere in translation from 2017. You can read a short extract on Deon’s website.
Deon Meyer lives in Cape Town. His books are published in 27 countries, and have been awarded many prizes around the world: the Deutsche Krimi Prize in Germany, the ATKV Prize in South Africa, and Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Le Prix Mystère de la Critique in France. His novel THIRTEEN HOURS was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger, and HEART OF THE HUNTER, was longlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Prize and selected as one of Chicago Tribune's '10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2004'. Most recently, the spectacular COBRA was shortlisted for the 2015 CWA International Dagger.
Praise for ICARUS:
‘Excellent … The richness of the characters, especially the multifaceted Benny, elevates this above most contemporary police procedurals.’ – Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review
‘Deon Meyer’s South Africa is laid bare in ICARUS […] it is as glittering and hard as the diamonds his country is famous for. […] Meyer utilises the crime fiction genre as an apparatus to create a multifaceted, unsparing picture of his country.’ – The Independent
‘Deon Meyer’s Benny Griessel series is one of the high points of contemporary crime fiction, and the fifth title, ICARUS is his best yet….[an] expertly engineered tale of sex, lies and fraud.’ – Laura Wilson, The Guardian, Crime Fiction Roundup 2015
‘Deon Meyer is not just South Africa’s greatest crime writer, he’s up there with the best in the world,as ICARUS shows.’ — Marcel Berlins, The Times