The Quiet Violence of Dreams by Sello Duiker

The boy harbors a profound distrust for all adults and for good reason, as every adult we encounter through Azure is ultimately only interested in exploiting him – for sex, for money, for power and ego. Told from the Azure’s perspective, Duiker weaves a narrative that lays bare the violence, exploitation, racial and sexual politics found just under the surface of South African society. Thirteen Cents is not a happy story, following the twelve-year-old Azure, a black boy with blue eyes (which are a source of constant trouble) who lives on the streets of central Cape Town. Sello Duiker took his own life in January of 2005 following a nervous breakdown. The two iconic authors both published their celebrated novels within one year of each other and both died tragically within a month of one another. Of this generation, Duiker and Phaswane Mpe (whose short novel, Welcome To Our Hillbrow is now considered to be one of the great works of contemporary South African literature) are perhaps the most beloved and well known. Sello Duiker is one of a generation of the first predominantly urban and black novelists to churn out fiction dealing with realities of a newly post-apartheid South Africa.

The book itself won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book Africa Region, back in 2001, when it was first published in South Africa. Ohio University Press has just released the post-apartheid novelist’s debut book in the US as part of its Modern African Writing series. Sello Duiker’s short novel, Thirteen Centsis simultaneously gruesome, violent, deeply disturbing, whimsical, and beautiful.

The Quiet Violence of Dreams by Sello Duiker