Joe Speedboat

From internationally best-selling author Tommy Wieringa, comes a rich and engrossing novel about a man on an odyssey in search of answers about his dysfunctional artistic family and the legacy they left behind.

When Ludwig Unger returned to his hometown after a decade, he arrived with a plastic bag filled with his mother’s ashes and little else. He was there to make amends with his lonely past, to say goodbye to the familial ghosts that still haunted him. Raised in a cliff-top cottage on the coast of England, Ludwig’s mother tried to create a normal life for her son after her husband one day left them to pursue his art. A mama’s boy, Ludwig grew up in her shadow, developing an obsession with her and her sensual allure. But when he discovered the secret of her past as the world-famous porn star "Eve LaSage” and her plans for a comeback, Ludwig’s world spun out of control. He soon found himself homeless, shouldering the shame of his mother’s career, and embarking on a journey that took him around the world.

Little Caesar is a story of beauty and decay, of filial loyalty and parental betrayal, and of the importance of self-sacrifice.

 border town on the steppe. A small group of emaciated and feral refugees appears out of nowhere, spreading fear and panic in the town. When police commissioner Pontus Beg orders their arrest, evidence of a murder is found in their luggage. As he begins to unravel the history of their hellish journey, it becomes increasingly intertwined with the search for his own origins that he has embarked upon. Now he becomes the group’s inquisitor … and, finally, something like their saviour.

Beg’s likeability as a character and his dry-eyed musings considering the nature of religion keep the reader pinned to the page from the start. At the same time, the apocalyptic atmosphere of the group’s exodus across the steppes becomes increasingly vivid and laden with meaning as the novel proceeds, in seeming synchronicity with the development of Beg’s character.

With a rare blend of humour and wisdom, Tommy Wieringa links man’s dark nature with the question of who we are and whether redemption is possible.