Title: The Safest Place You Know
Author: Mark Winkler
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2016
ISBN 9781415209097 / ISBN 978-1-41-520909-7
Hardcover, dustjacket, 14 x 22 cm, 265 pages
After his father’s violent death on a hot November day in the droughtstricken Free State, a young man leaves the derelict family farm with no plan, and with no way of knowing that his life will soon be changed for ever by two strangers he encounters on his journey south: a mute little girl who bears a striking resemblance to his late niece, and a troubled lawyer who detests the Cape wine estate she’s inherited from a father she despised. Set in South Africa against the backdrop of a country in flux, The Safest Place You Know is a powerful story, rendered in meticulously crafted, lyrical prose, about redemption and recovery, and what it means to carry the past with you.
Mark Winkler is the author of the critically acclaimed novels An Exceptionally Simple Theory (of Absolutely Everything), Wasted, which was longlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize, and The Safest Place You Know. His short story When I Came Home was shortlisted for the 2016 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and Ink was awarded third place in the 2016 Short Story Africa competition.