The Alibi Club

In 1998 a young South African arrives in Brooklyn, New York. He becomes a bartender at The Alibi, a dive full of blue-collar workers, drug dealers, music lovers and Guinness. At The Alibi, locals play pool and watch Jeopardy! as triple-A-listers from Manhattan eye their neighbourhood’s tree-lined avenues and buy up its historical brownstones. Soon soya milk and organic vegetables take up shelf space where cheap cleaning products and anaemic limes used to be. The Alibi is also the place from where its regulars experience the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, which leaves New York dripping with distrust while terror ripens on its sidewalks. The Alibi Club, Jaco van Schalkwyk’s poignant debut novel, is a unique document about a city, a neighbourhood, and the lives of individuals, all changed irrevocably.