James Whyle

FROM THE REVIEWS:

"Walk is a riveting insight into one of South Africa’s most notorious seafaring disasters, and a fascinating look into the things we'll do when desperately trying to find a way home."
The Oprah Magazine

"...things just happen, one after the other like feet walking, and the sand and salt scour away symbolism and significance until what's left is a brutal poetry of indifference, another verse of a violent song of a violent land, neither consoling nor too pessimistic. Whyle's show more writing... generates hard beauty."
Darrel Bristow-Bovey, TimesLive

"...the terse economy of the prose propels you into its relentless rhythm from the start... This is a remarkable piece of writing."
Jenny de Klerk, Saturday Star.

"A little gem of a book... from a significant writer with an instantly recognisable voice. Please read it."
Jenny Crwys Williams

"Five stars because I simply couldn't put it down."
Ray Hartley, GoodReads.

"This small gem deserves a place on the bookshelves of serious readers; a cherished fragment, unpretentious and incomplete, it creates an enduring set of images..."
Jane Rosenthal, Mail & Guardian.

"...transforms written history into literature... They become not just names, but characters. In short, Walk is an impeccably crafted literary masterpiece."
Daily News show less

A flickering scene of carnage in the forest. A fairy tale metamorphosed into something simple and old and real and horrible beyond reckoning. Yellow fires roaring like dragons and choking smoke and a stench of burning hair and bone and flesh and the trees looming over it. Bloodied beasts clotted with gore that sniffed about for any that might still live. A slathered shape approached.

“I think some got away.”

“They’ll spread the word,” said the Captain.

A realist nightmare that piles show more horror upon horror, The Book of War tells the story of a child who comes to manhood in the bloody cauldron of war. With inescapable prophecies locked quietly in the terse lines, it shines an uneasy light on how South Africa started to become what it is...

James Whyle was chosen by JM Coetzee as winner of the 2011 Pen/Studzinski short story award for The Story.

‘It is a very good book... Possibly great.’ – Rian Malan

‘A rare feast – a book whose subject is people slowly making their way through the trudge and mud of their history, but which is also a real page-turner. [It] makes visible, in a way I have not seen before, the Eastern Cape frontier wars.’ – William Kentridge

Available, world wide, from Jacana Media:

http://bit.ly/HNx58X

Digital preview:

http://issuu.com/jacanamedia/docs/the_book_of_war_flipping_preview/1 show less