In a Cape Town suburb, five women gather every Friday night to discuss their writing. Isabel, returning home, where the writing circle is to meet, is attacked in her car at gunpoint and raped. But she manages to turn the gun on her attacker and shoot him. In coping with the killing, the disposal of the body, and the breakdown and recovery of Isabel, focus moves to the intersecting personal lives of the women involved – Isabel, Carmen, Jazz, Beauty and Amina, all successful professionals in today’s South Africa. When the body is discovered, and the identity of the attacker revealed, all their stereotypes fall away. Narrated by all fi ve women in their individual styles, The Writing Circle is a wholly engaging, highly suspenseful novel that holds up a mirror to the violence in women’s lives.

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