signed first edition Hardcover
1983 · Johannesburg
by de Ridder, Jac
Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers. Near Fine in Near Fine dj. 1983. First Edition. Hardcover. 0868500623 . [very slight wear at ends of spine, otherwise tight and clean; ditto the jacket, with just some light surface-scratching to the rear panel]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the ffep: "To ________ & ______ / with affection / Jac"; also dated in the year of publication. Two novellas set in Sophiatown, a Johannesburg suburb which was once a vibrant center of black culture, but which under apartheid (still the law of the land in South Africa at the time of this volume's publication) had "been bulldozed into the ground to make way for the soulless symmetry of a new white suburb, Triomf" (after its non-white residents had been forcibly removed and relocated to various settlements and townships, of course). "A Daisy-Guts Cocktail" is a "tale of gangsters, shebeen queens, murderers, bank robbers, wayward spirits and strangely gifted souls"; "The Legend of Sipho Nyembezi" tells of "the gentle hunchback blacksmith who talks to angels, and of his friend Macbeth, a Clydedale stallion, who together become entangled in a series of events beyond their control." Signed by Author . (Inventory #: 22701)