Assassin

Henk Van Woerden, who has lived in both the Netherlands and South Africa, recreates the intriguing life of Demetrios Tsafendas and his 1966 assassination of apartheid leader Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd in his novel The Assassin (trans. from the Dutch by Dan Jacobson). Nominated for two major Dutch awards and translated into five languages, this story deals masterfully with galvanizing issues of race and power in South Africa under apartheid. With insight and empathy, Van Woerden imagines Tsafendas's torments as a biracial witness to a brutal regime and his progress toward the ultimate gesture of repudiation.