THE AZANIAN ASSIGNMENT

by Iain Finlay ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 5, 1978

A grim forecast for the future of South Africa--but a sound basis for a densely detailed, sturdily crafted suspense debut. It's 1981, and Australian Tony Bartlett, a reporter for the London Herald, is stationed in East Africa when he gets a hot tip on a hijacked plane. Strangely, the hijackers have made no demands, but have simply flown off and disappeared with the plane. The tip is that the passengers and a mysterious cargo were off-loaded in tiny Mbeya. Tony follows the plane's trail and other scents until he winds up in Johannesburg and is caught between the two equally reprehensible factions who've made South Africa a nightmare: the black revolutionaries now trying to take over, and the whites who have decided to make apartheid absolute by expelling blacks and importing cheap white labor. But Tony is onto a great secret: some white super-elitists have removed two-and-a-half billion rands in South African gold bars from the treasury and are now shipping it to Switzerland. This move will blow the U.S. dollar to bits and generally rearrange the world closer to the dreams of V. Lenin. In fact, the eventualities are endless, and Finlay has a grand time designing and tracing them. The novel begins as a love affair with Hitchcock films, then spreads and grows its own wings.

Pub Date: July 5, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION