Willem Anker’s Red Dog, Cormac McCarthy, and the Enigma of Coenraad de Buys

Abstract

Willem Anker has been accused of stealing from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) in his novel Red Dog (2018), the English translation of his award-winning Buys (2014). I defend Anker on the charge of plagiarism, while conceding that his novel could not have been the book that it is without the precedent of Blood Meridian. I go on to voice other reservations about Red Dog via discussion, inter alia, of Anker’s characterisation of Coenraad Buys and the rendering in English of his Afrikaans original. I conclude that the historical Coenraad Buys appears intractable to novelistic treatment, and that Anker signals his awareness of this while at the same time making a valiant attempt to bring the character to life.

Keywords: Willem Anker, Red Dog, Buys, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Sarah Gertrude Millin, King of the Bastards