The Noble Deceiver

Douglas Blackburn

Facts from the life of Piet Prinsloo, a civil servant of the Transvaal, as told by his brother-in-law.
A stunningly satirical novel that brilliantly depicts early twentieth-century South African society through the character of Piet Prinsloo, a civil servant who is like a traveling theater of errors, tricks, and evasions.
The text uses black comedy to offer a scathing critique of bureaucracy, colonial nature, and the ambiguous alliances between kindness and naivety, cunning and corruption.
The novel is not only a social satire, but a living document about the nature of power in a turbulent time, where the absurd turns into logic, and the deceiver becomes a noble hero in his own way.