Eternal Audience of One

One might as well start with Seraphin: twenty-four years old, playlist-maker, nerd-jock hybrid, self-appointed merchant of cool, Rwandan, stifled and living in Windhoek. In a few weeks he will leave the confines of his family life for cosmopolitan Cape Town where his friends, parties, conquests and controversies await. More than that, his long-awaited final year in law school will deliver a crucial puzzle piece of the Great Plan immigrant parents have for their children when they are forced to leave home and settle in new countries: a degree from one of South Africa's most prestigious universities.

For Seraphin, the coming year promises to be felicitous. But a year is more than the sum of its parts and en route to the future the present must be lived through and even the past must be survived. The Eternal Audience of One follows the intersecting lives of Seraphin and a host of eclectic characters from pre- and post-1994 Rwanda, colonial and post-independence Windhoek, Paris and Brussels in the '70s, the crowded public schools of Nairobi, as well as the hormone-saturated clubs and streets of Cape Town. From one of Africa's emerging literary voices comes a piquant modern epic of family, friendship and migration.