Decima (ENG)

A gay man who lives in Australia visits South Africa. The purpose of the visit is two-fold: to see his ageing and beloved mother, who lives alone in a retirement village, and to do research on rhino poaching to write a fictional account of two poachers who enter the Great Fish River Reserve in order to kill a rhinoceros and sell its horn. The fiction parts are written from various points of view. Most notably – and rather unusually – this includes the point of view of the old rhinoceros cow who stands at the centre of the narrative. The author-character has named her Decima, and attempts to tell her story.