About the Book
Scott Pack: Books of the Year 2018
Shortlisted for The Sunday Times Literary Awards (South Africa)
Twenty-two-year-old Etienne is studying film in London, having fled conscription in his native South Africa. It is 1986, the time of Thatcher, anti-apartheid campaigns and Aids, but also of postmodern art, post-punk rock, and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Adrift in a city cast in shadow, he falls in love with a German artist while living in derelict artists’ communes.
When Etienne finds the first of three reels of a German film from the 1930s, he begins searching for the missing reels, a project that turns into an obsession when his lover disappears in Berlin. It is while navigating this city divided by the Wall that Etienne gradually pieces together the history of a small group of Jewish film makers in Nazi Germany.
It is a desperate quest amid complications that pull him back to the present and to South Africa. However, his search for the missing film continues.
Ambitious and cosmopolitan, the material of S. J. Naudé’s The Third Reel is as disparate as the cities in which the book is set. Architecture, cinematography, sex, music, illness, loss and love all collide in this exquisitely wrought, deeply affecting novel.
About the Author :
S. J. Naudé is the author of The Alphabet of Birds, a collection of short stories, and a novel, The Third Reel. His work is published in Afrikaans, English and Dutch. He studied at Cambridge University and Columbia Law School. He has won the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize and a South African Literary Award, and was awarded the Jan Rabie and Marjorie Wallace Writing Grant for 2014. His work has appeared in Granta and journals in the United States, the Netherlands, and Italy. Having worked as a lawyer in New York and London for many years, he currently lives in Johannesburg.
Review :
Part thriller and mystery, a story of becoming oneself and then seeing oneself undone. This is a serious book that pulls the reader into realms that many of us are scared to venture Naudé has written a masterpiece of literature with an end that will leave you staring into the heart of light or darkness. But, mostly looking towards the light.
S. J. Naudé, who also wrote the much acclaimed Alphabet of Birds, has captured the spirit of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the 80s perfectly: the squats, the depressing grey of London, the anti-apartheid campaigners, the beginning of HIV Aids and of people with big dreams and visions for a better world who join forces to make ends meet. The Third Reel is a complex novel with many layers and allegories. It is an unsettling book that will give you plenty to think about. However, it is compelling reading and is just as compulsive as Etienne’s search for the missing reel.
Reading this book I was thunderstruck, with all that it implies: humidity, lightning, sweat, frissons of fear, the commanding of attention. Look at me, hear me. Reading SJ Naudé's The Third Reel pinioned me throughout, exhausting, exhiliarating. It is a magnificent, brilliant feat of writing, visceral and unflinching, and marks the point at which Naudé moves to the front line of the best of South African writers … Few books in the past years have I thought of more highly, or affected me as much.”
A work that definitely pushes the boundaries of convention, hope and desire, it is written in an eminently readable and beautiful style … The story is intricate, ambitious and haunting. Reflective of the cities in which the book is set, you’ll relive the sights and smells of an era that was fraught with sex, music, illness, loss and love. The construction is that of a fine piece of architecture, brilliantly fashioned and held together, taking us on a step-by-step journey through all the rooms of the psyche … Without doubt a book of great literary standing and one that holds the reader in its thrall, never losing its grip on you.
A magisterial novel … rarely have I been so captivated by an Afrikaans novel, so fascinated and impressed, kept so busy by it, even after a second read. With S J Naude's The Third Reel, we have a formidable new voice in Afrikaans, firmly established. The fact that he is writing in Afrikaans, and on the black wall of pessimism descending around us, takes one's breath away -- and provides a peeping hole to the light beaming on the other shore.”
To describe this novel as captivating would be a euphemism … People will be talking about this novel for a long time … With this book, Naudé’s talent as a writer is confirmed. In my view, it is one of the literary highlights of 2017.
Like all good art, The Third Reel does not conform to conventional expectations. It is a novel that is unsettling due to its uniqueness and delivers a real punch. It belongs on a shelf with the best Afrikaans novels.
Into a mid-1980s London of Thatcherism, post-punk, Aids, anti-apartheid campaigning and general greyness comes Etienne, a 22-year-old South African who has fled his homeland to avoid conscription and escape his homophobic father. He finds love there, meeting a taboo-breaking German artist named Axel while living in run-down squats and studying film. When Etienne discovers the first of three reels of an obscure German film from the 1930s, he becomes determined to find the other two. His quest takes him to pre-unification Berlin, where Axel has disappeared and where Etienne finds evidence of a group of Jewish filmmakers who operated during the Nazi era. Naudé’s second novel is a multi-layered work that delves deeply into the themes of identity and love, in which Etienne’s quest for truth becomes an exploration of himself and ultimately draws him back to the land of his birth. This is an outstanding, accomplished novel with both literary depth and a powerful emotional charge.
A young gay man from South Africa flees to 80s London to avoid national service and ends up embroiled in an obsessive affair that leads him to East Berlin in search of a lost pre-war movie. I loved the tone and feel of this, and the quest is great.
