Michael is a respected and haunted South African corporate lawyer – the narrator of this sweeping, intimate and intricate exploration of the plurality and mystery of things: love, grief, fate, lust – but most of all life. Nthikeng Mohlele once again delves into head-cracking and bruising questions, in this coming-out-of and against-age story; told with humour, beauty and calculated rage. Brimming with delicacy and authorial thunder, this part campus novel, part philosophical epistle, is one man’s rebellion against `life as we know it’. Rusty Bell is an appallingly wise examination of the perils of being human – by a writer who knows the beauty and savagery of words.