The Third Reel<br> SJ Naude

Twenty-two-year-old Etienne is studying film in London, having fled conscription in his native South Africa. It is 1986, the time of Thatcher, anti-apartheid campaigns and Aids, but also of postmodern art, post-punk rock, and Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Adrift in a city cast in shadow, he falls in love with a German artist while living in derelict artists‰ۡó» communes.

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When Etienne finds the first of three reels of a German film from the 1930s, he begins searching for the missing reels, a project that turns into an obsession when his lover disappears in Berlin. It is while navigating this city divided by the Wall that Etienne gradually pieces together the history of a small group of Jewish film makers in Nazi Germany.

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It is a desperate quest amid complications that pull him back to the present and to South Africa. However, his search for the missing film continues.

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Ambitious and cosmopolitan, the material of SJ Naudí©‰ۡó»s̴Ì_The Third Reel̴Ì_̴Ì_is as disparate as the cities in which the book is set. Architecture, cinematography, sex, music, illness, loss and love all collide in this exquisitely wrought, deeply affecting novel.