In April Fool’s Day Bryce Courtenay, author of the international bestsellers The Power of One and Tandia, celebrates the life of his son Damon, and his tragic death from medically acquired AIDS on 1 April 1991, at the age of 24. Damon was a haemophiliac, and his father’s book is both a damning indictment of the medical approach to haemophilia and of the carelessness with which the HIV virus was initially treated, and an extraordinary insight into the life of a family copy with a haemophiliac child. Bryce Courtenay wrote April Fool’s Day on his son’s last wish: “It is a deeply personal and painful story. I think I must have wept on every page. Each day as I sat down to write I would have to open the wound again, and frankly, it hurt like hell, a pain that never seemed to go away. Damon had an enormous lust for life and we thought he was going to be a spectacular gift to the world, until AIDS cut his life short.” April Fool’s Day is controversial, painful, heartbreaking and funny. It will make you laugh, and cry. Above all, it is a story of the incredible strength of love – how when we confront our worst, we can become our best.