The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

Overview

A Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award—Fiction

 For fans of The Kite Runner and A Brief History of Seven Killings, a page-turning literary and political thriller set in apartheid Johannesburg
 As the 1980s draw to a close, South Africa is a maelstrom of political violence, the apartheid regime in its death throes. Young Martin Helger is a misfit at an elite private boys’ school in Johannesburg, with a father who is a scrap dealer and a brother who is a mysterious legend.

When a beautiful and manipulative American activist arrives at the family home, Martin soon finds himself wrenched out of his isolated bubble and thrust into the heart of the struggle. At the same time, secrets from the past begin to emerge, tearing at the Helgers, a second-generation Jewish family, even as the larger forces of history and politics tear apart the country.

The Mandela Plot is at once a high-stakes literary thriller and a moving coming-of-age tale that charts the journey of a young man trying to find his place in a country that has lost its way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328585073
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/21/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

KENNETH BONERT’s first novel, The Lion Seeker, won the National Jewish Book Award, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award. Bonert was also a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. He was born in South Africa and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. 

Editorial Reviews

A Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Fiction A Publishers Lunch “Emerging Voice” A New York Post "Must-Read" book "This is fiction that illuminates shifting allegiances and power struggles during a dark time and place in recent history. A riveting thriller with a solid historical base." — Booklist, starred review "The Mandela Plot is as suspenseful as a thriller, and the truest kind of Jewish family story—suffused with love and secrets both. It'salso a masterful, terrifying portrait of a nation, at once bewitching and brutal, whose years on the edge have so much to teach America, and the world, today. You won't be able to put this book down." — Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo “Propulsive, bare-boned, and riveting, The Mandela Plot shows how competing loyalties to family, truth, and history can tear a person—and a country—apart. Kenneth Bonert’s unvarnished characters are fierce and surprising—there are no seat belts on this ride.” — Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink “Chaim Potok meets Leon Uris: a solid . . . portrait of violence and renewal.” — Kirkus Reviews "It’s the late 1980s in South Africa, where an awkward boy named Martin struggles to find a place at an elite private school in Johannesburg. A beautiful American activist comes to live with Martin at his family home, and she makes him see his own chaotic, changing country through a new lens." — New York Post —

From the Publisher

03/05/2018
Set in 1980s South Africa, this uneven literary thriller from National Jewish Book Award winner Bonert (The Lion Seeker) focuses on 16-year-old Martin Helger, a bored student at a private religious day school in Johannesburg. His routine life changes with the arrival of Annie Goldberg, an anthropology major at Columbia who has come to teach at a primary school in one of the city’s black townships, as a guest of his family. Instantly smitten, Martin becomes obsessed with Annie. He regularly sneaks into her room to search her possessions, among which he finds a concealed videotape. Annie catches him in the act; later, she reveals that the tape contains instructions for making explosives, and that she’s working to topple the apartheid regime. Motivated by lust rather than political conviction, Martin becomes her accomplice in duplicating the video so it can be widely distributed. Predictably, Annie and Martin’s efforts fall short with tragic results. Underdeveloped as a lead, Martin experiences personal losses that don’t pack the emotional punch readers would expect in the circumstances. Bonert fails to make the most of an intriguing setup. Agents: Kim Witherspoon and Maria Whelan, Inkwell Management. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2018-03-05
Sophomore novel from South African writer Bonert (The Lion Seeker, 2013) exploring the turbulent closing years of the apartheid regime.Martin Helger is a teenage mess. As one of the band of neighborhood kids who torments him says, "You don't have any friends. You can't do sports.…You don't have really much personality, hey, I mean admit." He's different, a working-class Jew in a world of segregation and separation, and he'll certainly never measure up to his brother, Marcus, who's graduated from high school and has disappeared somewhere in the front lines of war, missing in action and likely dead. A spot of hope comes into his life in the form of an American whirlwind, "a serious beauty" named Annie Goldberg, who's come to live with the Helgers while teaching African children in a township school. Annie smolders at the injustice of apartheid, and Martin falls under her spell even as the state security forces begin to clamp down on the anti-apartheid movement. It doesn't take long before the violence begins to mount, and then, one by one, Martin's friends and family begin to leave the stage, with only a very bad Afrikaaner cop to suggest a way out. Until, that is, Marcus returns; as it turns out, he has been an elite fighter all along and is now tangled up in a scheme meant to destroy the anti-apartheid cause once and for all. "Violence works," he says. "S'why they cane you from the start." Drawing on real events in recent South African history, Bonert unfolds a sometimes-crawling plot that threatens now and again to veer into Frederick Forsyth territory, though it's embedded in an eminently literary character study that explores a Jewish community whose elders are deeply reluctant to take part in the struggle—"Our job as Jews is to take care of Jews!" shouts Martin's father—but who, as always and everywhere, are swept up in the chaos.Chaim Potok meets Leon Uris: a solid if overlong portrait of violence and renewal.

Kirkus Reviews