A Trojan Affair: The SKA at Carnarvon

In this tale of zealots, scientists and scoundrels, Michael Smorenburg has married tension-filled intrigue and drama with cutting-edge, unfolding science to produce a compelling geopolitical thriller. Conflict, suspicion and fear explode across the pages as science confronts religion in Carnarvon, a small, staunchly conservative farming community in post-Apartheid South Africa. The silent heavens stretched above the pious town are perfect for radio astronomy-the fracking bounty below the earth... irresistible... and the two cannot coexist-the local population want neither. When Dara, 17, half Indian and raised in England, arrives in the heartland of this Calvinist Bible belt-a place his astrophysicist mother has come to build the biggest infrastructure in the history of science, the $2.5-Billion SKA radio telescope-he becomes the lightening rod for the town's anger and suspicion of outsiders. Fracking and astronomy are not good bedfellows and Dara might just have lit the fuse. And so unfolds a cascade of controversy, agendas and surprising alliances. Based on actual unfolding events, A Trojan Affair is a contemporary geopolitical thriller where science, religion, politics, greed and racism collide, tearing a community apart and setting generations against one another.