Graham Lang Graham Lang i(A141900 works by)
Born: Established: Bulawayo,
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Zimbabwe,
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Southern Africa, Africa, ;
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 1990
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Works By

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1 A Fulcrum of Infinities Graham Lang , 2016 single work novella
— Appears in: Griffith Review , no. 54 2016; (p. 49-75) 'Saul turns off the bitumen onto the dirt road and drives due west. The ute rattles along over the corrugated track; its tyres rumble over cattle grids between immense pastures. The land before him flat and featureless; everything - the rocks, sand and thin scrub - leached pale by the sun. The sky cobalt but for a distant spittle of cloud to the south. Behind him, miniscule against the sky, a range of hills and a line of electricity pylons. He crests a rim where it seems the whole country suddenly drops away before him, so vast and flat and desolate he is overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo. A nothingness out there terrifying in its extent. And as he drives down into that nothingness, he knows his search has ended.' (Introduction)
1 4 y separately published work icon Lettah's Gift Graham Lang , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2011 Z1803764 2011 single work novel 'Venture into the dark heart of modern-day Africa in this gripping novel of discovery and redemption.

'Zimbabwean-born, Perth-based Frank Cole is faced with an unusual request in his mother's will. He must journey back to his country of birth to deliver a substantial inheritance from his mother to a former family servant, Lettah Ndlovu. Set in Zimbabwe in the year prior to the 2008 elections, Lettah's Gift is a very personal journey set against a political canvas. The novel draws an incisive portrait of modern Zimbabwe; its social and political issues; its recent history and its conflicts between different tribal groups, as well as white Africans who have emigrated versus those who have stayed behind.

'The story is populated with a cast of rich and interesting characters; old Rhodesians who have struggled to let go of their glorious colonial past, corrupt African officials, and stoic liberals who still hope for better times after Robert Mugabe. Lettah's Gift is an absorbing novel that offers action, romance, danger and humour against an exotic and often confronting African setting.' (From the publisher's website.)
1 y separately published work icon Place of Birth : A Novel Graham Lang , Johannesburg : Jonathan Ball , 2006 Z1804010 2006 single work novel 'When Vaughn Bourke returns home after twenty-six years it is to exhume the graves of his family from their farm, Hopelands, and to relocate them to a churchyard in Shangani where they'll be safe. He leaves behind him a failed life in Australia - his marriage and professional life in tatters. While he knows the farm is under threat of seizure he has no idea of the nightmare that awaits him in a country where violence and anarchy have replaced the idyll he remembers from his childhood.

'Together with his siblings, Gus and Angela, he begins the arduous task of removing the remains of his forebears from their family soil. But the exhumations soon uncover a terrible event of the past that becomes a prelude to an even greater tragedy in which loss of life and land is the only outcome.' (Trove)
1 y separately published work icon Clouds Like Black Dogs Graham Lang , Johannesburg : Jonathan Ball , 2003 Z1804000 2003 single work novel 'Set in South Africa's turbulent 1980s and concluding in the post-apartheid 1990s, Clouds Like Black Dogs is a vivid and often violent story of loss and redemption. After a troubled upbringing on a West Coast farm, Manas Smith, a young coloured artist, is given assistance by a white benefactor to study art at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. There Manas encounters a spiralling world of political conflict. The repercussions of his naïve friendship with an activist poet, David Harris, are both unpredictable and terrifying. Similarly, his love affair with Zelda Sutton, a fellow art student and descendent of an old and respected Eastern Cape farming family, at a time in South Africa's history when love across the colour bar was not yet condoned, present's unimaginable dangers and consequences.

'Graham Lang strongly evokes the sinister atmosphere of brutality and treachery that pervaded South Africa's political climate during the decade prior to the first democratic election in 1994. It is against this menacing background, and with great difficulty, that Manas finally learns that redemption comes at the cost of exoneration and accountability.' (Trove)
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