The Children’s Day is a literary chronicle of a boy’s coming of age in the Free State town of Verkeerdespruit during the apartheid years of the 1960s. Through a series of finely drawn and illuminating situations, the novel captures what it was like to grow up in a world fraught with sometimes strange contradictions of class, race, gender and language. The widening world of adolescence is explored through the acute but puzzled eyes of Simon, torn between scorn for his surroundings and a desire to belong. Among the poignant and sometimes eccentric characters are Mr de Wet, whose eyes look twenty degrees to the right, Betty the Exchange without a chin, Miss Rheeder with her red shoes and Trevor, with his blonde fringe and pink shirt. Then there is Fanie, the poorest boy in the school – epileptic, taciturn, infuriating and yet strangely charismatic. Michiel Heyns is one of South Africa’s most acclaimed authors, and was until recently Professor of English at the University of Stellenbosch. He is the author of The Typewriter’s Tale, The Children’s Day, Bodies Politic and Lost Ground.