Set in South Africa’s turbulent 1980s and concluding in the post-apartheid 1990s, Clouds Like Black Dogs is a vivid and often violent story of loss and redemption. After a troubled upbringing on a West Coast farm, Manas Smith, a young coloured artist, is given assistance by a white benefactor to study art at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. There Manas encounters a spiralling world of political conflict. The repercussions of his naïve friendship with an activist poet, David Harris, are both unpredictable and terrifying. Similarly, his love affair with Zelda Sutton, a fellow art student and descendent of an old and respected

Eastern Cape farming family, at a time in South Africa’s history when love across the colour bar was not yet condoned, present s unimaginable dangers and consequences. Graham Lang strongly evokes the sinister atmosphere of brutality and treachery that pervaded South Africa’s political climate during the decade prior to the first democratic election in 1994. it is against this menacing background, and with great difficulty, that Manas finally learns that redemption comes at the cost of exoneration and accountability.

Graham Lang was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. A Master of Fine Art graduate from Rhodes University, he taught in various South African institutions before migrating to Australia in 1990. He is currently a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle. An accomplished artist, Graham Lang has exhibited widely in South Africa and Australia.

“‘There is no easy way to put it but this is what happened. No one else was at home except Joseph and Anna who were in the kitchen getting supper ready…Dad got up to unlock the gate for them to go…Then they heard the first shots that killed Dad at the gate. They heard Nan scream and the dogs going crazy. Then there were more shots. They carried Nan out the back and hid under some old sheets of corrugated iron behind the sheds while the terrorists shot the dogs and hunted around in the house for her. Joseph said they could hear the dogs yelping as they died. They could hear them laughing and fooling around on the piano before they smashed it. Nan died as they waited… At the gate one of them stopped and spat on Dad’s body where he lay. Then they disappeared…Sorry to write this. It’s a shit business I know. But I thought you would want to know what happened. Just as well you’re in Australia and not here to wake up to reality.’

I pause at the graves of my parents. The graves I have never seen. There is one headstone for the two of them…Closing my eyes, I pay belated respects. An image comes to mind of Joseph and Anna carrying Nan out the house and hiding. Surely Nan was bleeding heavily – how did they prevent a trail of blood? I shake my head, dispelling yet another question I don’t want answered.”

The Book
When Vaughn Bourke returns home after twenty six years it is to exhume the graves of his family from their farm, Hopelands, and to relocate them to a churchyard in Shangani where they’ll be safe. He leaves behind him a failed life in Australia – his marriage and professional life in tatters. While he knows the farm is under threat of seizure he has no idea of the nightmare that awaits him in a country where violence and anarchy have replaced the idyll he remembers from his childhood. Together with his siblings, Gus and Angela, he begins the arduous task of removing the remains of his forebears from their family soil. But the exhumations soon uncover a terrible event of the past that becomes a prelude to an even greater tragedy in which loss of life and land is the only outcome.

The Author
Graham’s place of birth is Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. A Master of Fine Art graduate from Rhodes University, he taught in various South African institutions before emigrating to Australia in 1990. He is currently a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle. An accomplished artist, Graham has exhibited widely in South Africa, Europe and Australia. Clouds like Black Dogs was his first novel.

“The idea for Place of Birth first emerged during visits to Zimbabwe in 2000 and 2003, in the wake of the first farm seizures. The misery and despair inflicted upon all Zimbabweans by Robert Mugabe’s regime seemed to be defined, in part, by loss of land and identity – of place. Despite having emigrated to Australia, I have always believed that I have been shaped by Africa. Hence, my sense of identity was profoundly challenged by Robert Mugabe’s persistent reference to Zimbabwe’s whites as foreigners. The farm seizure crisis brought home to me the tenuousness of life in Africa, and the terrible price still being paid for staking claim to territory.” Graham Lang, May 2006

Comments on the Book
"Cause and effect. There is always cause, some will argue. But how easily does cruelty born of injustice turn into cruelty born of itself.

And how inevitable is the day when effect becomes cause. When new hatreds will need expression..."

Graham Lang's second novel is nothing short of astonishing. There will be moments that you will be forced to stop and catch your breath. Soon, everybody will be talking about it.

Ann Harries says:
“Graham Lang taps into the ironies of the white African nightmare with prose as spare and self-deprecating as Coetzee's.”

We say:
Graham Lang’s Place of Birth will leave you in awe of a writing talent whose time has come.

Graham will be in South Africa for the release of Place of Birth - Johannesburg 26 & 27 June and Cape Town 28 & 29 June.