Adam & Luke

Under this joint cover-title, the book consists of two separate novellas: Adam van Eden and According to Luke. ‘I’m not 100% sure,’ says Robin Malan, the publisher, ‘but I think these may well be the first two gay novellas to be published in English in South Africa.’

Each of the novellas deals with an older married man’s attraction to a younger man, and the conflicted state in which that attraction leaves him. And what is the effect of this on the wife? And the younger man – does anyone take account of his feelings and his desires?

Peter Krummeck’s conviction that sexual orientation is not black or white but every shade of grey has found expression in these novellas. In Adam van Eden Krummeck draws on his personal experience of sexual discrimination within the church to highlight the damage inherent in fundamentalist condemnation.

According to Luke explores the anguished disruption of a heterosexual marriage. The author says, ‘It seems to me that society’s approach to gender ranges from complete intolerance of any departure from the patriarchal status quo to total acceptance and integration of gender in all forms of expression.’ He was encouraged to follow this line of thinking when working as a lay-minister for the Anglican Church under the mentorship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the mid-1980s. Many churches at that time were inclined to ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner’. Says Krummeck, ‘In typical fashion, Tutu rattled their cages and obliged them to re-think both “love” and “sin”.’