num_pages: 416
description: Winner of the 2010 Orange Prize for New WritersImmediately engaging vivid and buzzing with energy The Boy Next Door is the work of a true storyteller... At heart a love story it is also so much more as through the experiences of its charismatic protagonists it charts the first two decades of the emerging Zimbabwe with honesty humour and humanity... Irene Sabatini has written an important book that will enchant readers and which marks the emergence of a serious new talent.Di Spiers Editor of Readings at BBC Radio 4Orange Award for New Writers Chair of JudgesSynopsis:In Bulawayo Zimbabwe there is a tragedy in the house next door to Lindiwe Bishop; her neighbor has been burned alive. The victim's stepson Ian McKenzie is the prime suspect but is soon released. Lindiwe can't hide her fascination with this young boisterous and mysterious white man and they soon forge an unlikely closeness even as the country starts to deteriorate. Years after circumstances split them apart Ian returns to a much-changed Zimbabwe to see Lindiwe now a sophisticated impassioned young woman and discovers a devastating secret that will alter both of their futures and draw them closer together even as the world seems bent on keeping them apart. The Boy Next Door is a moving and powerful debut about two people finding themselves and each other in a time of national upheaval.
language: English
title: The Boy Next Door
publisher: Little, Brown and Company