Böcker av Oliver T Spedding

PHOENIX RESURRECTED is the story of two abused teenagers, Garth Gilmore and Cindy Bedford, and their struggle to lead normal lives despite carrying the debilitating burden that their maltreatment has inflicted on them. A contest between love and indifference.Garth rejects the notion that he needs to change. His anger towards the world that he believes has rejected him leads him to scorn emotions such as compassion, and love and he resorts to gambling and crime. Cindy battles to come to terms with her past realising that her anger and hatred need to be replaced with love and empathy; a monumental task for such a young girl.Cindy's love for Garth is treated with indifference by him and her attempts to support him cost her dearly. She perseveres though, believing that love will always triumph over apathy.In desperation Cindy agrees to participate in Garth's criminal activities, the two are apprehended and detained until they reach adulthood and can be sentenced. During this time Cindy continues to whittle away at her affliction but it is only by a fortuitous acquaintance with a viciously abused old horse that Garth finally begins to come to terms with his past and becomes aware of his deep love for Cindy. Sentencing looms though.

In 1978, five men die in a shack in Soweto, South Africa, during a skirmish between the South African Security Police and Umkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress. A year earlier they had all travelled from Durban to Johannesburg on a bus, totally unknown to each other.Isaiah Zuma: a nineteen-year old Zulu man destined for the Witwatersrand gold mines to find work and provide for his destitute mother. Too ambitious to work as a miner, he begins stealing explosives from the mine and selling them. Wary of the dangers in this illegal industry, he approaches Umkhonto weSizwe. Accepted into the organisation, Isaiah works with another operative making bombs and bombing targets to publicize the organisation's struggle for freedom.Bala Desai: a young Indian tailor who inherits his uncle's tailoring business in Pageview, Johannesburg, begins a new life with his wife and daughter, only to have the government forcibly move his business to the unknown Oriental Plaza and his family to the new Indian township of Lenasia. But Bala is determined not to lose his inheritance.Bogdan Vodnik: a Yugoslav immigrant is hired as a buyer for the Deep Reef Gold Mine. He is also an accomplished dealer in stolen and illegal goods. Coerced by an Umkhonto weSizwe operative into acquiring bomb-making equipment for them due to his violation of the Immorality Act and interrogated by the Security Police and forced to work for them, Bogdan goes underground and joins the struggle for freedom.Joseph Matimba: also known as "Shadow" and a survivor from the 1976 Soweto uprising, he operates an Umkhonto weSizwe cell in Soweto, attacking and bombing targets to publicize his people's struggle.Captain Tiaan Botha: a member of the South African Security Police, his prime goal is to capture the members of an Umkhonto weSizwe cell in Soweto.What happened between the time these men left Durban and their deaths a year later?

A young South African metallurgist, Paul Parker is studying in Turkey in 1992. He meets a Turkish peasant girl, Irene Yilmaz, they become lovers and Irene falls pregnant. They decide on an illegal abortion and the abortionist's assistant, Maria Ayaz, arranges the abortion.Doctor Ahmet Atilla performs illegal abortions but also rapes the pregnant girls while they are under general anesthetic. Paul pays for the abortion and accompanies Irene to the building where the abortion is take place. He hides nearby and sees Doctor Ahmet Atilla arrive to perform the abortion. He recognizes Atilla who attended to him previously when he injured his hand.Doctor Atilla anesthetizes Irene and begins raping her but she regains consciousness during the act. To silence Irene, the doctor strangles her. Outside, Paul falls asleep. Doctor Atilla tells Maria Ayaz, who is unaware that Atilla is raping his patients, to go home. Atilla erases all evidence of their presence in the apartment and dumps Irene's body in the sea. He then murders Maria to silence her.When Paul wakes up and can't find Irene he returns to his apartment. The police discover Irene's and Maria's bodies and Inspector Ali Karacan of the Istanbul Metropolitan Police suspects that Paul is the killer. When Paul accuses Atilla of being the abortionist Atilla flees the country. Paul faces life in jail but the police find Atilla's fingerprints in the abortion apartment. Karacan gives Paul his card and Paul returns to South Africa.Seven years later, Doctor Atilla, practicing neurosurgery in South Africa under the name Ismet Allita, hears of a psychological researcher, Selwyn Brink, who has invented a microchip which, when implanted in the human brain, blocks individual distant memories. Allita finds out that Brink is financing his research through drug dealing.When Paul Parker sustains serious head injuries in a car accident Allita is appointed to operate on him. Allita recognizes Paul and blackmails Selwyn Brink into providing him with a memory-blocking microchip. He implants the processed chip in Paul's brain, blocking Paul's memory of him.Then things go wrong.

The time is the early 1970's and the country is South Africa. John Matlala, a young black man aged nineteen, leaves the citrus farm where he has spent his entire life and sets out to seek his fortune in a country where the government is determined to stifle the development of its black citizens. His journey to the city of Johannesburg is fraught with the fear of arrest for contravening the racial laws of the time and the distrust of the white population that dominate his people. By the time he reaches Johannesburg he has learnt to distrust all his fellow men, although he still retains the naivety that his farm life instilled in him. John settles in the Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow where he meets Jimson, a streetwise petty criminal who persuades him to join him in his criminal endeavours. The two men proceed to steal and trick people out of their possessions using non-violent means but eventually violence becomes a necessity. Herman Malan is a wealthy white South African who has inherited his father's engineering business, but prefers the good life and cares little for business affairs. One of Herman's responsibilities is to collect the factory worker's wages on a Friday afternoon. John and Jimson learn about Herman's routine and set out to rob him. This leads to a sequence of events that include violent death, rape in a men's hostel in the black city of Soweto, the love that develops between John and a young Sowetan girl Susan, John's flight from Soweto and a strange coincidence that ultimately threatens the lives of Herman's parents and John. Woven into the tale are the ever-present shameful and disgraceful discriminatory laws of apartheid.