Moffie

Nicholas van der Swart has always been different. His family and his culture expect him to be one way, to live according to their precepts and rules, but his sense of self is strong and efforts to make him conform have only made him stronger. Diffident and introverted as a child, Nicholas learns as a young man that remaining true to oneself, however hard it may be, is an undertaking worth risking one's life for. When, at the age of 19, he is conscripted into the South African army, he enters a world that is utterly at odds with his every sensibility and his hard-won personal fortitude will be put to the ultimate test. In this world, he will face the scorn and violence of his tormenters, but will also find the strength to survive.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa has gone a long way toward exposing and exorcising some of the atrocities committed in the name of Apartheid, yet very little has been revealed about the adversities faced by gay people under the regime. Set during the Angola Bush War that raged from 1966 to 1989 in South-west Africa, Moffie transports the reader into the world of a young gay conscript with evocative realism. At turns heart wrenching and humorous, told with great sensitivity and infused with hope, Moffie is the inspiring story of a remarkable man whose tenacity and inner strength are pitted against a system that attempts to annihilate all traces of individuality.