Red Dust, Red Sky

Red Dust, Red Sky was inspired by the last years of apartheid in South Africa, a time of violence, courageous defiance and secrecy. This story of betrayal and the struggle for redemption is set against the rich landscape and culture of Lesotho and South Africa. It is told from the perspective of an overgrown Indian girl as she makes her clumsy way to adulthood and self-discovery. She is insistent upon knowing the truth about her detained brother and absentee father, despite the efforts of her mother. But then, there are other, stranger things about her home. It's a place inhabited by the dead and the living, the mad and the inscrutable.

Paul Sunga: "I conceived of this story when my first-born child was only days old, while we were still living in Lesotho. In fact, I dreamed the whole story, beginning to end, one night in a blaze of mortal anxiety. It was a dream of my daughter growing up, which is how I ended up with a female protagonist. I woke up and wrote the dream out on two pages of my journal. It was years before I could start working it into a novel. The original dream is still in there, somewhere..."

"...voluptuous, mysterious...wonderfully real."

Randal McIlroy, Prairie Fire Review of Books http://www.prairiefire.ca/reviews/sunga_dust_sky.html

"... transcendent and lyrically evocative..."

Carl Haggas, Foreword Magazine

Lesotho... TrekEarth Gallery