Empire Settings: A Novel of South Africa

by David Schmahmann

Danny Divin is a young white man in South Africa who enters into an illicit romance with a mixed race schoolgirl, the daughter of a black domestic servant. When social constraints force Danny to end the romance, he travels to America with the hOut of Printes of starting a new life. There he meets Tesseba, a curious and trusting artist who takes him in and marries him to save him from deportation. The two build a life together, but Danny continues to be plagued by a growing sense of loss. Twenty years later, Danny returns to a "new" South Africa in the hOut of Printes of saving a family fortune and finding the girl he has never forgotten.

336 pages, ebook

Published June 1, 2010

About the author

David Schmahmann was born in Durban, South Africa. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Cornell Law School, and has studied in India and Israel and worked in Burma. His first novel, Empire Settings, received the John Gardner Book Award, and his publications include a short story in The Yale Review and articles on legal issues.

He practices law in Boston, and lives in Weston, Massachusetts.