The Year of Facing Fire. Helena Kriel

An astoundingly written memoir, the book traverses universal themes of love, death and sex.Set in the mid 1990's, as South Africa emerges from the darkness of apartheid, at the heart of the story is Helena's terminally ill gay brother who's been keeping his illness a shameful secret. Conscious, terrified and trying to hang onto sanity, he becomes paralyzed, then blind as death draws closer. But it is Evan who leads the family through the fire.