The duo recently released the novel Sunderland, which has been described as “marvelously engineered.”
The novel tells the story of an unhappily married Cape Town academic, Art Berger, who is offered the opportunity to reconstitute the final papers of the great South African writer Charles de Villiers into the novel he was writing at the time of his death.
The novel alternates between sections, mostly in journal form, chronicling Art’s struggle to make sense of De Villiers’s fragmented notes.
Barris, who is the Language Coordinator in the Faculty of Engineering, was the voice of the writer Berger, while Cope wrote the fragments of the writer de Villiers.
“It was a very complex project and was technically very challenging,” says Barris.
“We had to negotiate a vision of where we wanted it to go.”
The duo agreed on a broad plot and then each chose a voice to represent. After two years of lots of juggling, Sunderland was launched early in May and has already enjoyed rave reviews.
Steven Boykey Sidley, the author of Imperfect Solo, Stepping Out and Entanglement, described the novel as “a startlingly original work: a novel within a journal within a novel, adorned with eloquent excursions into marriage, love, betrayal, academia, art, literature and a deep meditation about plot, character, narrative and the nature of story.”
The novel was published by Jacana Media Publishers and is available online and at leading bookstores.
