The Wildest Beauty

by Michiel Heyns

Danny Marais is the twin brother of the beautiful, talented Charlie.

The Wildest Beauty is a remarkable novel, an account of their early childhood to their eventual enlistment in the First World War. From their placidly peaceful Stellenbosch schooldays to, ultimately, the battle of Delville Wood, Danny keeps a loving but half-resentful eye on his brother

Though set largely in wartime, this novel is an intimate account of a small group of friends and family, inter alia the loving parents left behind in Stellenbosch. And then there is Danny’s life-changing encounter, in the darkened streets of wartime London, with a wryly cynical, battle-scarred officer.

In the midst of the greatest conflict in history, facing the wild beauty of ‘the abyss of unmeaning,’ Danny discovers the power of love, between friends, family – and even foes.

352 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2026

About the author

Michiel Heyns is a South African novelist, translator and literary critic. Until 2003, he was Professor of English Literature at the University of Stellenbosch when the success of his first novel allowed him to become a full-time writer. As an academic he is best known for his work on 19th and 20th century literature, especially his acclaimed study, Expulsion and the Nineteenth-Century Novel: The Scapegoat in English Realist Fiction (Oxford University Press, 1994).

In 2002 he made his debut as a novelist with the comic coming-of-age story, The Children's Day. This was followed by another novel of high comedy, The Reluctant Passenger (2003) which has since been translated into French. His subsequent novels have moved away from the South African milieu: The Typewriter's Tale (2005), which focuses on Theodora Bosanquet, the amanuensis of Henry James, was followed by Bodies Politic (2008), which deals with the English suffrage movement of the turn of the 20th century.

He is also the award-winning translator of Tom Dreyer and Marlene van Niekerk (most famously of her The Way of the Women), and continues to write widely as a literary critic and reviewer.

Reviews

[Carike]

Chock full of references to genitalia? Yes.

Surprisingly profound and heartbreaking? Also yes.

In a word... Exceptional.

[Linda]

My first thought on finishing The Wildest Beauty was ‘what a beautiful book’, and then I immediately asked myself how a book about the first World War can possibly be beautiful? But it is.
Only the last 50 or so pages of the book are about actual combat, and Heyns manages to describe the barbarism and arbitrariness of trench warfare without miring the reader in hopelessness and despair about the futility of it all.
To me this book is about the emotional ties that bind us. It explores the different types of love amongst men: fraternal love between twin brothers; romantic love and physical attraction whether acted upon or not; and platonic love, the latter being forged by the enforced closeness and interdependence of ten men in a section, fourty in a platoon, suffering together under harsh conditions. The story is compassionately and sympathetically chronicled.
Other readers are likely to have divergent assessments of this novel.
It held my attention throughout, and surpasses the four other books by the same author that I've read previously (Children's Day; The Reluctant Passenger; Lost Ground; A Poor Season for Whales).

[Anschen Conradie]

#TheWildestBeauty – Michiel Heyns
#HumanAndRousseau

Twins are associated with a unique level of unity, despite physical separation and independence. A similar unity is expected from the citizens of a country, especially when facing a common enemy. Neither is an absolute truth.

Charles Marais was born ten minutes before his twin brother, Daniel on 1 June 1896. Affectionately known as Charlie and Danny, they grew up in Stellenbosch. Their childhood years were characterized by a constant push and pull between their very different personalities, Danny regarding himself as “… a slightly faded autochrome of Charlie.” (15) In August 1914 Britain’s declaration of war on Germany divided South Africa, as did time and life divide the twins. Both enlisted, however, and both faced the horrors of Delville Wood.

The title of the novel is derived from the poem, Strange Meeting, by Wilfred Owen, who is probably best known for his anti-war creations emanating from his own participation in World War 1.

“It seemed like out of the battle I escaped…
Save the undone years,
The hopelessness.
Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also;
I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world…”

Although the war has ended more than a century ago, interest therein has not waned. The Pulitzer Prize for fiction has been bestowed upon a novel set in the trenches in May 2026, after all. Angel Down, by Daniel Kraus, is one of very few novels marketed in the horror genre, and the first to boast only a single sentence as complete text, to receive this accolade. The novel is narrated from an American perspective but has found international acclaim.

In the South African context, the reasons for voluntary enlisting were varied and often based on subjective beliefs and individual considerations. This is illustrated in the novel by the introduction of characters reflecting these variables. Whilst one feel obligated to honour his father’s wishes, “He told me once that he’s ashamed of not having fought in the Boer War. So, I suppose I’m going to war because he didn’t.” (142), another acts out of a perception of patriotism, “…but in the end I reckon it’s me country, for all that I’m South African now, and I reckon I owe it something.” (144)

Charlie had his own reasons for enlisting; his friendship with Andrew Sinclair, a South African of Scottish descent, was a relevant factor. Danny’s reasons can be summarized in a solitary word: Charlie.

Despite potential barriers involving, but not limited to, ideologies, culture, language, religion, and status, the twins are affected by encounters with others on the road that would take them to the Western Front: the taciturn Japie, Matthias, burdened by his German parentage, the compassionate Breytenbach, sly Sinclair, the contradictory Henley, the flamboyant Meerkat, and the battle-scarred Toby. The concepts of family, friendship and brotherhood become intertwined and definitions less certain: “And I understood that family now meant not the dutifully affectionate letters written by uncomprehending next of kin, but these abusive, smelly, crude sharers of the lice and the shit.” (286)

Danny’s meeting with Toby, short as it was, emphasizes the horrors of war, especially when he narrates the trauma of a personal experience: “And I carried what remained of him with me until one of my own men said to me, Sir, he’s dead.” (212) Analogous to the poetry of Owen, the text echoes the futility of war and the pain of such losses with phrases such as, “…uncontaminated as yet by the sickness of war…” (217), and “… in a pointless war the point is whatever is decreed to be the point” (281)

In contrast with the deliberate sterility of Henry Reed’s Naming of Parts where the split-voice structure juxtaposes military terms with those of natural beauty, Heyns chooses not to focus on the mechanics of war, but rather on the emotional turmoil revealed in the face of existential uncertainties and the brutality of loss, reminiscent of the immortal words of Owen’s description of a dying brother in arms in Dulce est pro patria mori:” In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning…” and the haunting desperation in opening sequence of his Anthem for doomed youth, “What passing bells for those who die as cattle?”

Danny is the first-person narrator throughout, interrupted by extracts from Sinclair’s diary adding an epistolary variation to the otherwise one-sided text. The diary entries corroborate Danny’s reliability as narrator while Charlie remains a suspicious doubter, choosing loyalty to Sinclair rather than to Danny. The rising tension between the brothers culminates in an emotional tirade by Charlie: “You’ve not been made to feel anything; you’ve arrived here on all on your own and you decided to blame me for it. I’m sorry, but I can’t shoulder the responsibility for the dismal view you have of yourself.” (186)

The wildest beauty is also the abyss of unbridled horror, as intertwined and inseparable, but also as contradictory and conflicting as twins.

#Uitdieperdsebek

[Richard Tomlinson]

I am familiar with many of the settings and themes of this book. Both a stage setting and intricately interwoven into the story, they contributed to a compelling reading, and short-changing the beach of a beach holiday. A review should proceed to the stage setting, but in this case I shan't. I was a bit taken aback by the protagonist's 'self-loathing' and, at the same time, his mentioning a happy childhood until he was 20. The protagonist's relationship with his twin brother, central to the story, was coloured by, seeming to me, an assertion of self-loathing rather than one whose origins I understood.

[Ellen Erasmus-Morton]

I flew through The Wildest Beauty! The prose is a masterclass of rich characters and superior word-choice. How he manages to make his characters live on the page! Just remarkable.
The central storyline involving the twins is compelling. You are left with lingering questions - did they have different fathers? There are no obvious answers.
Brilliant, thought-provoking, and memorable. Highly recommended!