False Bay

Set between the mountains and seas of Cape Town’s False Bay, this sweeping novel traces the lives of survivors, outcasts, lovers, and ghosts. From Holocaust memories to apartheid’s scars, from convent walls to drag balls, each voice tells a fragment of a larger story about loss, belonging, and the search for truth. Haunted yet luminous, polyphonic yet deeply intimate, False Bay is a South African epic of family, faith, queerness, and the sea that binds them all. For readers of Zoë Wicomb, Damon Galgut, and Toni Morrison, this is a daring novel where history collides with myth, and the living are never far from the dead.

About the Author

David Dunn

William Dunn is a South African urbanist and lawyer based in Cape Town. His work engages deeply with questions of place, memory, and belonging, informed by his professional background in city-making and justice. Passionate about LGBTQ issues, spirituality, and Catholicism, Dunn brings these concerns into his fiction with nuance and urgency. False Bay is his debut novel.

REVIEWS

I would recommend False Bay to readers who like layered, character-driven literary fiction that is strange, candid, and emotionally full. It will especially appeal to people interested in South African stories, queer histories, Catholic imagery, family secrets, and novels where place becomes almost a character of its own. For readers willing to sit with discomfort, contradiction, and dark humor, False Bay offers something memorable: a haunted, salty, bruised novel that keeps listening to the people history usually leaves underwater.

Literary Titan Read more

Any rank outsider to Cape Town and its multi-layered social dynamics may well ask if so much of it could possibly exist along one little stretch, the ±6,5 km coastal road from Kalk Bay to Muizenberg or, at least, enough to capture the imagination of any self-respecting artist that they would want to enshrine it for posterity. Read more

Michail Rassool Read more

False Bay by William Dunn is a novel, the likes of which I have rarely encountered. Artistic, with flowing narration, interspersed poetry, and alternating points of view, centered around the people of False Bay over the course of many decades, the novel truly takes the readers on a fascinating journey. Following many different people, living many different lives, False Bay follows a South African town both pre- and post-apartheid; living with the consequences of apartheid and the taboo of queerness in society, many of the characters in the novel lead tragic, but truly human, lives. The pure humanness of the novel was beautiful and personally my favorite element of it; these characters and their lives are messy, but they are real, and it was great to read

Jordan Durfee Read more

“I just finished False Bay by William Dunn and found it absolutely captivating. The way the stories weave together to explore memory, family, and LGBTQ identity is really moving. It uses the history of the area so well to ground the characters’ lives and it’s left me thinking a lot about how complex our relationships with one another truly are.”

“I found the book an honest portrayal of an alternative lifestyle. William Dunn handled all the people as human beings and not judgemental. I look forward to the next publication.”

“FABULOUS. Couldn’t put it down. Magical, whimsical, passionate, shocking, observant. Clever. Unexpected. Completely enthralled by it and your characters and the story telling. Love it.”

A sweeping, mystical epic set against the backdrop of Cape Town, that weaves together the experiences of queer individuals and those navigating the racial categorizations of both the apartheid and post apartheid era. It is a beautiful tapestry of found family, faith, and loss all bound together by the omnipresent sea. Netgalley review

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