Title: Wolwedans in die Skemer
Author: Leon van Nierop
Year: 2012
Publisher: Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers
Length: 441 pages
Language: Afrikaans
Wolwedans in die Skemer is the novelisation of a 2012 movie, which was based on an almost two-year long radio drama that was very well-received in the 1980s. Leon van Nierop, a writer, producer and reviewer who has been working in the South African media industry for quite some time, was the main writer of all three versions of the story.
Of course, I didn’t know all that when I started reading the book. What I knew was that I had seen a billboard for the movie, and the title had immediately intrigued me. What does “Wolwedans in die Skemer” mean? Were wolves dancing at dusk, or did something special happening in a place called Wolwedans every day at twilight? I can never resist analysing a good play on words.
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| Tafelberg |
The epilogue sets an eerie scene: a young girl with a basket of food, a wolf, screaming hadedas, and a mysterious boy who comes out of the river and tells her: “Ek en jy gaan nog eendag trou. As jy groter is.”
So, a near-death experience and a marriage proposal from a stranger in the forest. Not creep at all.
The bulk of the book is about Sonja Daneel, who was on her way to a lodge to start her new receptionist job when she was in a car accident. She wakes up at Hotel Njala with no memory of who she is, or how she got to Hazyview.
The owners of Hotel Njala are hostile towards her, and she want to leave. But her friendship with Jan Joubert, and the niggling feeling she has that she has been at Hotel Njala before- that she belonged there before- keep her in Hazyview.
The action, drama and suspense of the novel are centred around the rambling lodge, the crime wave that is affecting local businesses, and the relationship between Sonja and Ryno, the dangerously dark and charming tour guide at Hotel Njala, who is keeping a powerful secret.
After someone is found dead in the house, and while rumours of a wolf skulking around on the premises are spreading, the novel goes into the past of two main characters. What is revealed is a multi-generational love story whose devastating end has everything to do with what’s happening at Hotel Njala in the present.
The course of the novel changes dramatically when questions from the past are answered in the present in a way that is simultaneously spine-chilling and heartbreaking.
Wolwedans in die Skemer is a thrilling story of romance, greed, murder and deceit, with characters that will stay with you for at least two days after the last paragraph.
Nkhensani Manabe 