Nicholas Morris is a fundamentally decent chap who likes order, and isn’t given to messy emotions. He and his ‘sort-of’ girlfriend Leonora share a relationship that is comforting in its sameness, and he is ensconced in a well-paid career as an environmental lawyer.

Apart from his frustration with the madness of Cape Town traffic, he is not aware of feeling any dissatisfaction with his lot. But then, he’s not aware of feeling very much at all, really. Until he realises he’s forgotten to vote in South Africa’s first democratic elections - because he was seeing to the long-overdue mowing of his lawn. With a jolt Nicholas begins to wonder if he isn’t being squeezed to the margins of his own dull life, despite the efforts of his flamboyantly gay colleague Gerhard, who constantly tries to provoke him into letting go and living a little.

But soon Nicholas has no choice. When he takes on a case to save the baboons of Cape Point from developers, he becomes drawn into intrigues involving a charismatic liberal judge, dinosaurs of the old régime and the full cast of the wealthy Tomlinson family, not to mention its golden boy heir.

When the baboons are captured for experimentation by a research institute from the Old South Africa, which has somehow become incorporated into the New, he finds himself acting with uncharacteristic passion and conviction. Sucked into a whirlpool of deceit, he finds a lot more going on below the surface than he’d ever imagined – and soon he is not only struggling with his own identity, but also fighting for his life.

The Reluctant Passenger is a hugely entertaining and intelligent comic novel set in contemporary Cape Town. The rainbow nation begins to unravel in a hilarious riot of traffic chaos, ecological mayhem and sexual discovery. Irreverent, satirical and uninhibited, this novel retains something of the poignancy of The Children’s Day, and all of its humour.
Heyns’ quiet intellect and dry humour make this novel a wonderfully satisfying romp.