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Loading... Bloodsong and Other Stories of South Africaby Ernst Havemann
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Wonderful, evocative short stories by a man who has written nothing before or since - as far as I can discover. Do we all have an unexplored short story writer within us? ( ) no reviews | add a review
An extraordinary voice tells these 11 stories, making use of familiar words in unfamiliar order and adding details so pungent that time and place are pinned in a sentence. In "A Farm at Raraba" a white South African soldier captures "one of those yellow Hottentot types, with spaces between his peppercorns of hair," and they shelter together for the night. In the morning they go their separate ways, a pattern repeated in "Death of the Nation," when the white boy from Natal takes leave of his black companion, Fakwes. The latter shares everything he knows with his white masterwhich bees sting and which merely buzz, how to salute the praying mantisand the white boy in turn teaches the unschooled black to read and write, presenting him with a New Testament, in Zulu. "I will be a preacher, but not a believer," Fakwes says, and proceeds to preach revolution. Excursions into unknown cultural country abound, especially in the captivating title story, when a young farm boy defies his father and joins streams of natives bound for a tribal ceremony at the chieftain's kraal. The author, once a mining engineer in South Africa, is a marvelously gifted writer. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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