Although conceived and birthed well before the ANC’s December 2017 elective conference and the changes of the political and governance guards that ensued, The List imagines a ‘New Dawn’ for South Africa in the closing years of the second decade of the 21st Century.

Rumours have abounded since the early days of South African democracy of a list or lists given to Nelson Mandela and the TRC by old apartheid securocrats of their agents infiltrated into the upper echelons of the ANC during the struggle years. These rumours gained new currency with the death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in April 2018 and the revelations of the machinations of apartheid’s Stratcom securocrats.

The List tells the story of a group of veterans of MK, of ANC intelligence and of the post-apartheid intelligence service, who are formed into a highly secret task team by the newly elected president to investigate the possibility of such remnants of apartheid security threatening to obstruct the radical changes the new president and his team are planning.

The List follows these veterans and their nemeses through the struggle years, exile, the MK camps and into the years of democracy and hope, disillusion and hope again. It observes while the struggle veterans painstakingly attempt to pick through the detritus of the old regime in the new, but just as the moment of optimism begins to blossom, the task team uncovers a ghastly betrayal. Is it too late to save the president and the country?

The novel is narrated from the future by one of the veterans of the task team from his second exile in a bedsit in London.

Original and forceful, At Fire Hour delivers Bheki Makhathini, a South African character study for the ages.

Suspected of betraying the ANC, the young poet leaves home for exile in 1976, and until his return home after the unbannings in 1990, Bheki writes the story of a revolution – an unfinished one.

Gilder allows Bheki the freedom to deal with the big ideas of art and love, freedom and struggle in a shrewd and vivid way, the result being an unforgettable and deeply moving tale.