However, for a war novel, the war landscape is unexpectedly backgrounded for the largest part of the novel. Rather, interactions, views and conversations are foregrounded, constituting the largest portion of narrative space with only the last part of the novel focused on the war itself. The reason behind the war setting is thus not immediately obvious but is rather seemingly meant to contextually illustrate the complexities behind war dynamics, particularly considering the reconciliation between the Boers and Brits during World War I only twelve years after the Boer War. After all, times of war are distinctly not simple.  

The novel commences in 1896, while tensions are rising between the Afrikaners and English in South Africa. On the cusp of the Anglo-Boer War, twins Danny and Charlie, are born, ten minutes apart, from a controversial union between their Afrikaans father and English mother. 

Older Danny constitutes a reliably unreliable first-person narrator, portraying past events of his childhood and ultimate conscription vis-à-vis his own subjective lens while retaining, to the extent possible, an awareness of his own subjectivity. Through his reflections, he also represents himself as a passive agent in his own past narrative, providing detailed contemplations of his inseverable connection to Charlie throughout the first part of the book. That is until Danny’s pubescent years reveal his burgeoning homosexuality, something he initially mistakes for an erotic attraction to Charlie which serves to subtly estrange them. Quickly learning the unacceptability of his feelings in his current society, as well as the historic naturalisation thereof by the Ancient Greek Spartans, Danny buries his feelings, quietly stewing in his own obsession with, and mild resentment for, his brother:  

“Peeved as I was at times with Charlie’s insouciant passage through the world, even I could see that there was one law for ordinary mortals like me and another law for the favourites of the gods like Charlie.” 

By 1916, the Great War is well underway, and the Scottish Battalion is recruiting South Africans on a voluntary basis to fight alongside the English against Germany. In this process, Afrikaners and English unite for a greater cause, despite the still simmering tensions between them in the current South Africa. Charlie, elects to sign up, which drives the events of the second part of the novel.  

The narrative, through poignant yet sometimes visceral prose, conveys immense depth, delicately weaving subtle dry humour between tragic spaces, thereby balancing the heaviness that is this war novel, as is expected from a novelist like Heyns. His writing style is also deliberate, meticulously navigating Danny’s experiences through fastidious diction, albeit repetitive in its description of the “verdant landscapes” or teetering on the verge of sentimentality at times:  

“I think we were both still apprehensive, not sure what chasms could open up under our feet, neither of us wanting to risk disturbing the precarious equilibrium of our newfound accord.”  

Ultimately following Charlie into the war, Danny ultimately confronts its brutally destructive, demoralising and dehumanising nature. He reflects on the war-torn fields in France, the dead bodies through which they must crawl when they arrive at the front and the immense turmoil this invokes. And yet, beside his deeply loved platoon mates, Danny also uncovers a simple beauty in the utter wildness of war. 

“We shared, if nothing else, a common enemy, a common purpose, and ultimately a common fate. And above it all a semi-conscious dependence: whether we liked the man next to us or not, he was the man next to us.” 

Engrossing, compelling and painfully honest from beginning to end, The Wildest Beauty embodies the delicate among the devastation of war wrapped up in an unpredictable narrative that contains multitudes of human experiences.