With Half of One Thing the Namibia-born, South Africa-raised author brings us a love story and a war adventure about a New Zealand soldier fighting for the British. Gideon Lancaster infiltrates a Boer commando and falls in love with Esther Calitz, a Boer woman.
Van den Berg has been living in New Zealand since 1998.
Why do you write?
Creating something, anything, is good for the soul. Stringing words together is what I can do.
What's the first book you read that made you think differently?
I read only Afrikaans until I was 15. Then I picked up Leon Uris's Exodus and discovered I could read English. A new world opened. Soon I was reading Kafka, Nabokov, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and the Russians.
What is your favourite place to write?
In my tiny home office on an easy chair that has shot springs, with my laptop.
Who are your literary heroes?
Philip K Dick because he wrote serious books in a trashy genre. Nabokov and Chandler for style. Charles Willeford and Jim Thompson for courage. Alan Furst for atmosphere. KC Constantine for dialogue. Romain Gary for his versatility and world view. Just about anyone who followed their own muse, actually.
What books are on your bedside table?
What I read most often are crime novels with integrity, without serial killers.
How long did it take to write 'Half of One Thing'?
On my computer there's a file named ''Boer spy novel" dated 2002, so it's been a few years. But I did other things in between as well.
What are you working on next?
I'm having fun wrestling with another historical novel, set in German Southwest Africa.
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