Matthew MacDevette, student and author, Cape Town

Where do you live?

Not Aus­tralia. Does any­thing besides that really matter?

How long have you lived there?

I have not lived in Aus­tralia all my life. I can­not read­ily ver­ify whether my mother trav­eled there while I was cap­tive in-womb, but for my own sound­ness of mind I am will­ing to accept her “I stayed in Pieter­mar­itzburg” sto­ries at face value.

Where and what are you studying?

Hon­ours in Pol­i­tics, Phi­los­o­phy and Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of Cape Town. Was for­merly at Stel­len­bosch Uni­ver­sity, but soon decided that self-contained islands of same­ness become mad­den­ing after a while. Erm…I’m lean­ing more towards the Eco­nom­ics part. That’s about all I can say, I suppose.

What do you love about Cape Town? Dislike?

The fact that it’s nowhere near Aus­tralia (the joke is wear­ing, but not worn). Also, it is inde­cently beau­ti­ful – in just about every way, seen and unseen. I could go into bits and pieces about the hip­ness of this and the buzz of that, but there are travel web­sites for that.

What is your passion?

Sto­ries, ver­bose dead peo­ple (some call them ‘schol­ars’), nov­elty and blasphemy.

What would you like to do when your stud­ies are over?

Grad­u­ate. And work! All for the mother coun­try! The com­pul­sion to be pro­duc­tive, whether unjustly or not, has been imposed on me ever since I was a wee lad. Oh, and I would also quite fancy being pub­lished (not get­ting pub­lished, already being published).

What is your favourite restaurant/pub/?

What kind of a ques­tion is this? My liv­ing room.

What is your favourite recre­ational spot? (beach etc.)?

Other people’s pre­ciously held beliefs.

You’ve writ­ten a book — tell us about that?

A novel. Set in 1920s Dres­den, Ger­many. Ref­or­ma­tion never hap­pened, Catholic Church still main­tains con­trol over Europe. Seeds of a sec­ond Attempted Ref­or­ma­tion are appear­ing. Sec­ond year uni­ver­sity stu­dent with infa­mous dead mother accused of witch­craft, must flee, is per­haps guilty. Strange, seem­ingly wicked stranger toys with pro­tag­o­nist in many inter­est­ing and unnerv­ing ways.

Fun, dan­ger­ous, dev­as­tat­ing, irrev­er­ent times in a Theocracy.

Ulti­mate dream?

World peace! No, just kid­ding. World peace would be bor­ing. Sin­cerely, it would have to be to be an accom­plished author, a con­tribut­ing pro­fes­sional and alive at 51.