The ConservationistWinner of the 1974 Man Booker Prize Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm. As the upheaval in Mehring's world increasingly resembles that in the country as a whole, it becomes

seductively

and yet everything that is important

rationalism and superstition

These days

Roger West of Scotland Yard has a boss who simply does not like his methods

he discovers more than one enemy

if he agrees to die at the end of it

and then mysterious packages begin to arrive

Conflict and fear

CERN Institute

Johnson said of the acerbically comic and exuberant Albert Angelo that it was where he really discovered what he should be doing

Frank Spira