Rowing Lesson

Winner of the South African M-Net Literary Prize (English category).

“Rarely in South African writing will we encounter language of such fire and passion.”—J.M. Coetzee

“The beauty of The Rowing Lesson is in its fluid metaphors, its urgent storytelling . . . and the lyric desperation of a daughter’s love.”—O Magazine

“Beautiful. . . . Unfailingly original.”—Jennifer Egan

“Visceral. . . . Intensely exhilarating.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Like Joyce or William Gass or John Edgar Wideman, Anne Landsman fashions a sensual web of memory and desire, rescuing a world on the brink of extinction through the power of her lyricism.”—Stewart O’Nan

“Amazing.”—Los Angeles Times

“A tour de force.”—Roxana Robinson

“An adventure in language. . . . It makes art of life.”—Louis Menand

Betsy Klein is summoned from her home in the United States to the bedside of her dying father in a South African hospital. Faced with having to say goodbye, she delves into his mind, speaking to him in the lyrical second-person. She imaginatively recreates his life—his struggles to become a doctor after being orphaned young and his fight to win the respect of his Boer patients as a Jew—as well as her own experiences with him as a father.

Anne Landsman was born and raised in South Africa and received degrees from the University of Cape Town and Columbia University. Her debut novel, The Devil’s Chimney, also set in South Africa, was a Book of the Month Club Quality Paperback Selection and was nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.