The Voluptuous Delights Of Peanut Butter And Jam

Lauren Liebenberg

From Shelf: The 2008 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist

* Shortlisted for the Orange Debut Prize * Set against the convulsive backdrop of war and a country's death throes, explores themes of loss, guilt and redemption in an Africa that is at once grotesque, poignant and beautiful; told through the story of two young girls

Nyree and Cia live on a remote farm in the east of what was Rhodesia in the late 1970s. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical grandfather, theirs is a seductive childhood laced with African paganism, mangled Catholicism and the lore of the Brothers Grimm. Their world extends as far as the big fence, erected to keep out the 'Terrs' whom their father is off fighting. The two girls know little beyond that until the arrival from the outside world of 'the bastard', their orphaned cousin Ronin, who is to poison their idyll for ever.

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