Mafeking Road - Softcover

Bosman, Herman Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1479264067 ISBN 13: 9781479264063

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

Synopsis

Mafeking Road is the first published collection of Herman Charles Bosman's Oom Schalk Lourens stories.

This edition contains the original and unabridged text.

Set in the Groot Marico in South Africa the stories are told through the eyes of Oom Schalk. The stories are wonderfully crafted, funny, tragic, and with many twists and turns. Oom Schalk is at times the wise old man of the Bosveld, the village idiot, a racist, a thoughtful voice on race relations, a bumbling romantic and a skilled match-maker.

Oom Schalk gave Bosman the ability to craft stories that we love but where we can't escape the truth of South Africa's past.

The gems include:

• Starlight on the Veld
• Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy
• In the Withaak’s Shade
• Ox-Waggons on Trek
• The Music-Maker
• Marico Scandal
• Mafeking Road
• The Love Potion
• Makapan’s Caves
• Yellow Moepels
• Bechuana Interlude
• Brown Mamba
• Dream by the Blue-Gums
• The Gramophone
• The Prophet
• Drieka and the Moon
• Mampoer
• The Widow
• Veld Maiden
• The Rooinek
• Splendours from Ramoutsa

These stories have become true South African classics and we don't doubt that you will fall in love with every one of them.

About this title

Review:

The pacing and perspective of Bosman's tales . . . are unlike anything else in English. The closest comparison may be Robert Frost poems or Bob Dylan songs. --Publishers Weekly

Herman Charles Bosman's prose is easy as breathing and light as breath itself, perfectly suited for capturing those small, precious, otherwise fleeting moments in which gathered hope, colliding with given fact, defines, in a series of small steps, how we come to look upon life. --Lee Stringer

A subtle and simple treatment of deep reflections. . . . A classic set of stories, deserving of world attention to match the attention it already receives in Bosman's home country. --David Lahti

Read these stories for the O. Henry-style socko punchlines, for their atmosphere, for the history, read them simply because they're wonderful, entertaining and humane stories where to weep is to laugh, read them because they make a mostly forgotten world live, but read them. These stories are beautiful fruit from a difficult, problematic, worn and wise, humorous and tragic landscape. --Catherine Bohne

The stories in Mafeking Road move between comedy and tragedy, often several times within the same story, and they detail loves lost, or lovers lost, or tragicomic encounters with the British, or family dramas, but each of the stories is masterfully executed and wonderfully written, and achieves its effects almost magically. --E.J. Van Lanen

About the Author:

Herman Charles Bosman (3 February 1905 – 14 October 1951) who the poet Roy Campbell called "the only literary genius that South Africa has produced" came from an Afrikaans family but was raised as both English and Afrikaans. After graduating he became a teacher in the Groot Marico, which provided a backdrop for many of his stories. In the school holidays of 1926, Bosman visited his family in Johannesburg where he shot and killed his stepbrother during an argument. Bosman was sentenced to death for the crime and was sent to Death row, his sentence was later reduced. In 1930 he was released on parole. Bosman became part of the literary circle of Johannesburg and toured Europe for for almost nine years. He returned to South Africa at the start of World War II where he began work as a journalist. Bosman experienced severe chest pains and was taken to hospital in October 1951. On his admission stated, "Born Kuilsrivier - Died Edenvale Hospital." He was discharged but collapsed at home a few hours later and died before reaching the hospital. Only three works where published before his death. Most of his stories have been gathered and published posthumously.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1479264067
• ISBN 13: 9781479264063
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 174