‘I had heard a rumour, a buzz that the only Nobel Prize winner for literature from the Low Countries had plagiarised. I had done some preliminary research. I had applied for a grant. I had travelled to South Africa for it. But why, actually?’
While researching for his doctorate in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Leiden, David Van Reybrouck came across a curious aside.
The great Belgian writer and Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck is alleged to have plagiarised the South African writer Eugène Marais in his 1926 book La vie des termites. Van Reybrouck travels to South Africa to investigate the case and finds himself in a contemporary situation that completely removes him from the atmosphere of the distant past. The reality of South Africa presents itself. The investigation, which begins with a simple question, becomes a quest of extraordinary proportions.
