South African-born Marli Roode lives in London and recently visited South Africa for the launch of her debut novel, Call it Dog. The Johannesburg launch was at Love Books, Melville.
Call it Dog is set in South Africa. Against the backdrop of a country struggling to absorb its bloody history and forge a new democracy itasks whether justice and truth are more important than the bonds of loyalty and love, and explores what is it like to feel that you no longer belong in the land of your birth – or to your own family.
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Marli Roode and her mother
Jana du Toit, Penguin
Joanita Cloete, Penguin
Kate Rogan, owner of Love Books
Kate Rogan and Marli Roode
Godfrey de Meyer, Penguin
Taryn Das Neves, Penguin
Ziel Bergh, Penguin
Marli Roode
Jean Fryer, Penguin
When asked about writing a novel about South Africa after she’s been living in London for ten years, Roode replied that it was difficult because she moved to England when she was seventeen, so she doesn’t know how it is to live in South Africa as a grown-up. “The book is set in 2008 in the time of the xenophobic violence and I felt sitting outside of South Africa that was such an important thing to write about because many people think that the story about South Africa stops at ’94.”
Zakiya McKenzie, Northcliff Melville Times
The title of the book comes from a Nietzsche quote: “I have given a name to my pain and call it 'dog': it is just as faithful, just as obtrusive and shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as any other dog – and I can scold it and vent my bad moods on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives.”
Other guests that attended the book launch