American author tackles familiar South African problem in new book

Corban Addison is a remarkable author but even more than that, a forthright and compassionate human being.

He has managed to do the near impossible by combining his passion for writing with his deep concern for his fellow man and turned that into a recipe for success.

Where other writers have resorted to blood and gore to sell books he’s opted to do what great writers before him have always done and relied on superb storytelling instead.

“I started writing at about 15 or 16 in high school but at that point I never aspired to do it professionally,” he says.

He went off to college and obtained degrees in law and engineering and only attempted his first novel in his senior year.

“That was quickly abandoned. I tried twice more but it wasn’t until my wife and I watched a movie on trafficking that was happening on the streets of America that looked remarkably similar to our own,” says Addison.

He credits his wife with the initial idea for what became his first novel, ‘A walk across the sun.’

Where his previous novel dealt with the insidious plague of human trafficking , his current novel tackles a topic that is all too familiar for residents of the townships of South Africa: the rape of children and political corruption.

Although his book, ‘The Garden of Burning Sand’ is set in Zambia it details a familiar story for South Africans, the sexual assault of our children and consequent battle for justice for victims.

Addison’s new book tells the story of Zoe Fleming, an American attorney working in Lusaka, for a local Zambian NGO.

She’s called in to help after an adolescent girl is raped and her attacker turns out to be the son of a powerful and well-connected industrialist but finds her efforts for justice frustrated at every turn by the corruption and stagnant bureaucracy that plagues this continent as the story moves from Lusaka to Johannesburg and Cape Town. country and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. A truly exceptional read.