The tender chronicle of a boy's coming of age in South Africa during the apartheid years of the sixties, The Children's Day captures the essence of growing up in a world fraught with the strange and sometimes violent contradictions of class, race, gender, and language. The widening world of adolescence, in all its allure and confusion, is explored through the eyes of Simon, who struggles to make sense of the adults around him—torn between scorn for his surroundings and a desire to belong.

This debut novel is peopled with poignant, vulnerable, and sometimes eccentric characters, and it is through their lives that Simon comes to understand the complexities of love.

Michiel Heyns is the author of four novels: The Children’s Day, The Reluctant Passenger, The Typewriter’s Tale, and Bodies Politic. He has translated two works by Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat and Memorandum, and he has recently translated Equatoria by Tom Dreyer, Aflame Books (UK) 2008. He reviews regularly for the Sunday Independent. He was awarded the English Academy's Pringle Prize for reviewing in 2006 and the Sunday Times Fiction prize in 2007for his translation of Agaat.