

“With a sprinkling of the original Afrikaans and countless contextual details – places, brands, music in the background, food, drink, and of course the search for Halley’s Comet itself – Barnard transports readers back to a specific period in time, one that may be familiar to older readers who were teenagers looking for Halley’s Comet themselves, or one that young adults today can explore and reflect on for the first time. “A thrilling, tension-filled story of friendship, love, radicalism, and justice that will resonate with many readers” - Kirkus Reviews Halley’s Comet is a story of friendship, love, change, taking chances, hope, a comet, and some pretty cool 80s music. And when anti-Apartheid revolutionaries set their sights on the town, it will change the course of the three young people’s lives forever. This era-defying friendship-sparked by a shared secret- challenges everything Pete thought he knew and believed.

Thrust together with two complete strangers-Petrus, a black farmworker’s son and Sarita, an Indian shopkeeper’s daughter-the trio find themselves running for their lives from the vicious Rudie, whose actions will ripple far beyond that fateful night. Pete lives a relatively sheltered life, primarily concerned with girls and rugby- until one January night changes everything. Halley’s Comet is the coming-of-age story of Pete de Lange, a white 16-year-old schoolboy, set in small-town South Africa in 1986. In the final years of South Africa’s Apartheid era, an unlikely trio-a sheltered white rugby player, a black farmworker’s son, and an Indian shopkeeper’s daughter-discover the consequences of knowing the truth and having the courage to speak it.
