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The Story Station

Alba - Rachel King

Alba - Rachel King

Regular price R 94.00 ZAR
Regular price Sale price R 94.00 ZAR
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Alba, the white flower, hothoused from birth, whose roots have no earth, no dirt. What happens to a plant with no earth? It shrivels. It dies.

Alba—purity, chastity—named by her mother, tormented by her too. Not just pale, but white, transparent. Until Dutch, her life was as bleached out as her eyes, her body. Then she’d known the heat of red, of violet even. Dutch was a man who lived by his own rules, shunned by the conformist world of the school where Alba still teaches. Dutch had spread light among the pupils, dangerous light which the headmaster could not, would not, tolerate. So now Dutch lives with his hawks in exile on the rhynes and Alba stays away, fighting her loss and the violence of her desire, fighting most of all against her mother’s withering contempt. To the headmaster she is the blank on which he thinks, like her mother, like Dutch, he can make his mark and move away. But he’ll learn—they all will. The true Alba—powerful, happy, proud—is waiting. Not to die, but to bloom.

Alba is about the terrifying and intoxicating balancing acts of the loss and regaining of the self, the surrendering of hope, the terrible confusions of eroticism and identity, love and desire, flight and commitment. In this, her remarkable first novel, Rachel King writes with mesmerizing beauty and a dark disturbing intensity of imagery and language, transforming the novel of sexual obsession into a work of rare richness and power. There can have been few more striking or assured literary débuts in recent years.

Condition

Very Good (VG): I may show some small signs of wear - but no tears - on either binding or paper.

Dimensions

L: 21cm; W: 13cm; H: 2cm

Weight

0.38 kg

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