My Heavenly Favourite Rijneveld Marieke Lucas (2025)

Set during the tempestuous summer of 2005, this novel follows a local veterinarian who becomes enraptured by a 14-year-old farmer’s daughter, his favourite, while tending her father’s cows. This deeply troubled man is the narrator, convinced that he offers the object of his love a tantalising escape from the restrictions of her conservative rural life into a world of fantasy. The obsessive dependence he cultivates gradually becomes a terrifying trap, with a crime and confession at its heart threatening to tear their small community apart. The novel has been described as mesmerising, deeply discomforting, extraordinary and a tour de force of transgressive imagination.