Firepool: Experiences in an Abnormal World

A collection of essays and non-fiction. Kwela Books, 2017.

This is just a glimpse of my Experiences in an Abnormal World. I intend writing a Book if I ever have the opportunity, but medical attention is what I need at present.
Demitrios Tsafendas, Letter from Pretoria Central Prison

Excerpt in The Johannesburg Review of Books, 3 July 2017
The Firepool, Financial Times, 18 August 2017
Interview with Eusebius Mckaiser, Radio 702, 31 August 2017
Top 10 South African books of the year, Sunday Times, 12 December 2017

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Intelligent, amusing, far-ranging and enviably well-written, Twidle’s collection of essays…gets under the skin of our current predicament with erudition and insight.
Sunday Times

Hedley Twidle's work is exquisitely crafted, clever, self-deprecating, and, above all, deeply thoughtful. We are lucky to have a writer of his calibre working on contemporary South African material.
Jonny Steinberg

Mentally exhilarating! A book I will return to again and again, both for its uncommon insights, and the quiet beauty of its prose.
Rebecca Davis

Hedley Twidle is an essayist of rare brilliance. His reach is remarkable. Whatever subject he touches, his writing is always luminous, astute and often darkly funny.
Rob Nixon

The sequence of the essays behaves almost as a collection of paintings – a polyptych of stories that are each exquisite and then add other layers as they ricochet against one another. 
Business Day

An intellectual and emotional feat, calling for understanding as well as compassion.
Cape Times

Funny, self-deprecating, some of the best prose I have read this year, an infectious curiosity about the seemingly mundane and everyday...The essays are stunning in their range, observation, playfulness, insight, and aesthetic qualities.
Eusebius Mckaiser

A tour de force of literary comedy.
Simon Schama, judge of Financial Times/Bodley Head essay competition

Twidle is sharp, has a deadly sense of humour, and is a master when it comes to self-irony. He is undoubtedly one of our foremost writers.
Rapport

An exquisitely observed snapshot of contemporary South Africa and a deeply personal journey into the mind of its author
Aerodrome