Journeys to the End of the World
Clive Algar
 Psychology student Vicky Watts travels from Cape Town to Plettenberg Bay hoping to discover what happened to her enigmatic great-grandfather, Dan Butler, who returned from the trenches of the Western Front in 1918 suffering from shell-shock. Like the archaeologists working in the Letterbox Cave (a pivotal location in the story) the novel gradually brushes through layers of the past, revealing not only Dan’s harrowing story of war, guilt and love but reaching back to the foundations of modern South African society when a young Khoi flees the brutality of his trekboer master. The mysterious cave, near Plettenberg Bay, connects the lives of the major characters and it is near this archaeological site that Vicky experiences her own life-altering crisis.