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Will, the Passenger Delaying Flight
9781967673513
Getting out of Europe is the only thing on Volker’s mind when he buys a one-way ticket to Africa. The 24-hour layover is less than ideal.
Stuck in Charles de Gaulle airport, Volker waits, thinks, and observes. Around him, a strange cast of actors moves across the stage: a porn star, a child trafficker, a terrorist with dwarfism, a trans woman, a pedophile, a disgraced professor. As he walks the terminal, Volker contemplates their fates, his own, and the fate of the lover he left behind.
Innovative and subversive, rich with humor and wit, Will, the Passenger Delaying Flight flips the novel form inside out to expose the messy, dreamlike quality of transient spaces—and to memorialize with awe and reverence the people who move us and move past us with nothing but a glance.
Lufthansa, the airline that carries him stops at Charles de Gaulle airport and here he waits and waits and waits. And in the airport he observes and describes and thinks. The text is a stream of consciousness, Volker’s thoughts. Interspersed with this are stories of people he encounters in the airport; a murderer, a terrorist, a person with dwarfism, a trans woman, a porn star, a terrorist, a child trafficker, a paedophile. All are connected, with each other, with Volker and with us, the readers.
Adair’s novel is innovative in form, self-conscious and self-critical; it challenges conventional Western assumptions that all good novels have a clear story line, a good plot and fully rounded characters.
Paperback
21.95
$
Pub Date:
Sept. 2025
Praise For:
Will, the Passenger Delaying Flight
"Adair is an accomplished writer with the ability to transport her readers into seductive and, at times, dark worlds she skilfully conjures." — Barbara Boswell, Professor of English University of cape Town and author of Grace, a novel.
"Barbara Adair is one of South Africa’s most original writers. In WILL, the Passenger Delaying Flight, her voice is comical, dark and wittily allusive. Enigmatic from beginning to end, the novel (set in an airport) never goes where one expects. The narrative is tightly woven; yet still it soars, borne aloft by its own imaginative charge and linguistic richness." — David Medalie, writer and professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at University of Pretoria
"In a dystopian world that has served up an imperfect future, Adair breathes life into the limbo and emotional baggage of her characters as they travel across the world." — Karabo K. Kgoleng, broadcaster, public speaker, writer
"Barbara Adair's latest novel is unique and what it lacks in length it makes up for in depth. [...] With frankness and wry humour, these characters allow readers a glimpse of what lurks behind the stereotypes. Running beneath the tales are informative and entertaining footnotes that feed into the overall narrative. Adair has created a captivating journey in this quirky, wonderful read." — Tiah Beautement, The Sunday Times
"[A] literary experiment that is unique in structure and presentation. The thought-provoking, graphic, witty, and shocking is related in a nonchalant fashion that includes a skillful play of words. [...] [A] respite from the ordinary, same old same old." — Puleng Hopper, EW Blog
"[A] prescient book in that it deals with characters who get stuck in an airport terminal, and it deals with what's happening to them there. [...] So it’s something that suits the moment we are in.” — Ivan Vladislavic, VOA News
Creators
Author: Barbara Adair is a novelist and writer. In Tangier we Killed the Blue Parrot was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2004. Her novel End was shortlisted for Africa Regional Commonwealth Prize. She contributed to Queer Africa and Queer Africa 2, and her writing, particularly her travel writing, has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. She is currently working with the Wits Writing Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand.