Matchstick Men

The book, a fictional novel, tells a story of a young man on a mission to fill a void left by a father who abandoned his family. After struggling with a foreboding sense of emptiness that gnawed at his consciousness, he travels to a rural village where his father was born seeking questions about his whereabouts, only to stumble into a maternal family and a brother he did not know about. After a meeting with the family elders to establish his claims, he is eagerly welcomed into the family, but he is still left with unanswered questions. The journey turns out to be a rollercoaster of emotions as he discovers that his father was still alive somewhere, but shocked and appalled by revelations from his grandmother that the man he was looking for is a drug lord and a wanted criminal.
Now knowing who or what his father is, he needs to decide what to do next and it is time for hard questions. Was this going to be the end of the journey, in the light of this troubling discovery? Having built an image in his head about a perfect fantasy father for so long, he has a lot of questions he needs to ask his father, if he can find him, about his life choices and their impact on him as a son struggling with abandonment issues. As much as he wants to confront him about his illicit activities, he has more pressing questions he would direct to him as a father. The first one is whether the lure of the profits from drug money had been so overwhelming that he had to abdicate any responsibility as a parent to him and his brother and whether it was such an easy choice to make. More importantly, he would ask him what kind of man chooses to run away from his responsibility to live a life of fame based on criminal activities.
After getting over the shock of discovering that his father is a drug lord, he tries to understand why a young man from a rural fishing village would walk away from a possible career in law to start a life as a criminal. He struggled to understand how a young man's bent moral compass and a disdain for the law would be shaped in a rural setting based on community values.
Meanwhile, his father is on the run from his East European partners after a major drug bust at a roadblock near the OR Tambo International Airport, confiscating close to R2 billion worth of drugs and other illicit substances. He knows that there will be a major blowback from the loss of valuable merchandise and his head is one of the two on the block. When he gets to hear about the police being on the lookout for a Czech native who is a suspect in a shooting, in cold blood, of the other local partner, he knows his life is in danger and goes on the run.
When he gets to his hideout, he instructs his lawyer to assist with exploring legal or other viable options to negotiate his way out of the partnership with the East European cartel which would get him out of their clutches. When that does not materialise, he approaches a fixer to facilitate a meeting with a Pan African cartel. In a cruel twist, the fixer dupes him into meeting the Amistad, a global criminal enterprise on a crusade to drive the East European cartel out of the African drug market. After robbing him of his nest egg from his criminal activities to fund its projects, the Amistad elbows him out. He finds his way back home and faces the possibility of having his family washing his hands of him, because of the shame he has brought to the family.
Ultimately, when he finds his way back home and prepares for a cleansing ceremony, his two sons turn their backs on him.
The story explores themes about love, family, patriarchy, culture, fatherhood, African drug trade, power, and greed.