A quarry. A crazy plan to run away and write a novel. From the author of the exciting debut Buried Treasure comes this coming-of-age story with a twist.

On the outskirts of Vivo, there is a cabin at the bottom of an abandoned quarry, barely visible from the roadside. With the help of his four best friends, Filo moves into this secluded place to write his first novel. He’s convinced doing so will change his life and save him from a soul-destroying career as an accountant.

The quarry, however, might not be as abandoned as it seems… What or who will Filo discover there? And what price will he pay for his art?

Philosophical, erudite, and sexy, God’s Pocket is a thought-provoking read that will haunt you long after you’ve finished the last page.

On New Year's Eve in 1987, lightning kills Nate's and Danny's mother. To deal with the loss and make sense of a world seemingly governed by chance, their distant and eccentric father creates the Nicotine Gospel.

"According to him, an eight by five cardboard box containing somewhere near twenty machine-made cigarettes would tell you all you needed to know about a man."

The boys throw themselves into the lessons to be close to their dad, but as nate grows up and begins to understand how strange the family gospel (and their father) truly is, he starts to worry. While Nate excels at school and finds ways to escape their father's neglect and the increasingly ramshackle house in Durban, Danny seems to revel in courting danger and death.

Decades later, upon learning of their father's death, Nate and Danny, long estranged, decide to drive from Durban to Cape Town to attend the funeral. On the journey, they must confront each other and their troubled past to find a way forward.

Welcome to Vivo, where the only cemetery is run by old Mateus and his dog, God. Mateus’s eyes aren’t so good these days, which is why he has been burying bodies in the wrong graves, and also why, while out walking with God, he trips over a young homeless girl. On a whim, Mateus decides to appoint the girl as his apprentice.

Novo, who has been sleeping on the street with a dog-eared copy of The Savage Detectives as her pillow, is determined to reorganise the cemetery, but she will have to hurry: buried awry, divorced from their names, the ghosts of Vivo are accumulating, unable to proceed to the afterlife without knowing who they are. Also, someone, or some thing, is on the loose, killing people and closing in on the one person who can make things right.

Vivo is a town with a pigeon-messaging service, a phone booth used for romantic encounters, and a number of residents who are not quite what they seem, including a prostitute, a professor and a prophetic flower-seller. Oh, and the coffee is hellishly strong.

Erudite and wise, magical and quirky, Sven Axelrad’s debut novel is an enchanting adventure that explores what our names mean to us and who we are without them.