Bitter Dawn: A Search for the Truth about the Murder of Anni Dewani (Non-Fiction) by Dan Newling

Paperback:  The man standing next to me was a tall, good-looking man of Indian heritage in his early 30s.  He was freshly shaved and smartly dressed.  Shrien Dewani seemed calm and composed.  The only outward signs or trauma I could notice were the two large, dark purple bags under each of his eyes.  I offered him a seat.  He accepted and we started to talk.  Over the following 45 minutes, the British businessman, then on the eighth day of his South African honeymoon, told me about the murder of his wife, Anni, 40 hours earlier.

So begins Bitter Dawn (2014), Dan Newling's journalistic investigation into a crime that ignited firestorms of fascination and outrage not only in South Africa, but across the world.  At first, they story seems simple enough:  Shrien Dewani, a young British businessman on honeymoon in Cape Town, arranges the murder of his newlywed bride in a clumsy township hijacking.

However, a close examination of the crime reveals some uncomfortable truths.

Basic questions such as "Why were the Dewanis in such a notoriously dangerous township at that time of night?", "How did the gun waving hijackers know the couple would be on that township road at that particular time?", not to mention "Why did the hijackers kill Anni...but leave Shrien unharmed?" are conspicuous.

Over the years - from the moment he interviewed Shrien Dewani just two days after Anni's death to the eve of the Briton's 2014 murder trial - Newling has painstakingly pieced together the many pieces of this puzzle.  Containing facts hitherto unpublished, interviews with witnesses until now unheard from, and the fruits of deep journalistic research into South Africa's criminal justice system, Bitter Dawn lifts the lid on a crime far more complex than the media narrative has so far assumed.

Featuring an extraordinary cast of real-life characters doing and saying things which at times seem barely believable, Bitter Dawn reads like a spine-tingling Hollywood thriller but every word of this impeccably researched book is true.

While it may be difficult to find anyone who believes Shrien Dewani to be innocent, the facts Newling has uncovered provide compelling reasons to question the establishment story and accurately predicted the exoneration of Shrien Dewani for his wife’s murder.

Bitter Dawn is a gripping work of investigative journalism which reveals some worrying truths, not only about a bloody murder, but about its investigation, South African politics, global media ethics and how we all, as news-consumers, respond to stories when boundaries between right and wrong, between innocent and guilty, and between truth and lies, become blurred.

Update:  The South African court may have cleared Shrien Dewani of involvement in his wife's murder on 13 November 2010 but as of today, he could face his first public questioning under oath over the murder of his wife, Anni, on their honeymoon in South Africa in a resumed UK inquest into her death.

About the author:  Dan Newling is a British freelance journalist who is based in South Africa.  He has written about South Africa for almost all UK newspapers and has helped produce television documentaries about the region for both the BBC and ITN.  Prior to moving to South Africa in 2010, Dan worked as a news reporter for the Daily Mail newspaper.  Born in London in 1976, Dan lives in Cape Town with his wife and two young sons.