Unassuming archivist Macaulay Vogel examines a recently discovered cache of old police archives, when all of a sudden he comes upon a surveillance file about himself. It’s a terrible shock: he doesn’t recognise this person at all.
       
Who is the youthful Macaulay Vogel in these reports? As Vogel sets out to discover who he once was - and now is, a series of dramatically unintended events is ignited. Vogel soon discovers no one wants the past raked up anymore. He seeks out old friends: a lover; former comrades; the struggle lawyer turned corporate lawyer; even their nemesis, Boschard, the eerie former security policeman.
         
Vogel’s search for the truth is paralleled by the excavation of a mysterious accumulation of bones in the centre of Cape Town. Is this a secret slave burial pit? The site becomes an impassioned battle ground and the rising social and racial tensions threaten to spill over into violence. Unwillingly, Vogel is sucked into mediating between two former comrades, now bitter rivals. Macaulay Vogel, however, is also haunted by his own secrets: above all, the mysterious Marda. For whom does he buy all those extravagant bouquets of flowers? The twin strands of the files and the bones finally converge, threatening to crush Vogel.

This is a story about South Africa, today: of lapsed hopes … and lost love.

“See what happens when you dig up skeletons and try to make sense of them today,” Boschard warns. “The files, you see, are like the bones. Best left to rest.”

About the Author

Bryan Rostron's previous novel, My Shadow, was commended for the Commonwealth Writers prize. He is the author of Till Babylon Falls, a non-fiction account of Robert McBride and the 1986 Magoo Bar Bombing, which Anthony Sampson described as, "of political and historic importance."

Rostron has written for, among others - The New York Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The New Statesman, and Private Eye.

“My Shadow is a complex, cryptic, intriguing work [...]. Rostron brilliantly creates a bizarre yet familiar world in which yesterday’s dissident is today’s hero and tomorrow’s head of state”.
- Michiel Heyns

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