The Smell of Apples

The Smell of Apples is a 1995 debut novel by South African Mark Behr, also published in the same year in Afrikaans as Die Reuk van Appels. Mark Behr describes the Afrikaner mentality and in apartheid South Africa as seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy called Marnus, the son of an Army General. A movie based on the book is planned for a release in 2011, starring Julian McMahon and Gillian Anderson. Marnus Erasmus is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in the late sixties with his family in Cape Town, South Africa. The Erasmus' live as a white family in a country which is mostly inhabited... by coloured people. The white people rule South Africa and Marnus' father is an important general in the army. The white population in South Africa descended from the British immigrants, who came while the country was a colony of Great Britain, and the Boers, who are descendants of the Dutch settlers. Marnus grows up believing that black people are second class people due to having been indoctrinated by the apartheid system and his parents' views. On the other hand we, the readers, see that all Marnus's encounters with black people have actually been good.
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