Jon Elkon

Jon Elkon was born and brought up in Apartheid South Africa. His parents were committed in a bourgeois way, to the struggle against Apartheid. His father Sam was a member of the Industrial Council, as well as being a self-made mattress millionaire and worked for the recognition of black trade unions. Mother Valerie, a member of the Black Sash women’s movement, protested against the injustices of the system by standing mutely in public places in a black sash, symbolising the death of democracy. The family lived in constant fear (paranoia) of being watched, of the telephone being tapped, of persecution one can expect in a police state. Probably their fear was quite unjustified – neither parent ever posed a major threat to the system. Bridge and golf were much more important to them than political injustice anyway. Which stung the idealistic young Jon who didn’t make his views secret. He was the victim of a swarm of rugger buggers at this boys’ school, who saw him as an effeminate ‘Kaffir lover” and made his life hell. At 16, he left King Edward VII School for a cram college in the centre of Johannesburg. Here he found his self-confidence, and met regularly with a group of like-minded adolescents with the joint project of undermining Apartheid and returning the country to sanity…

At 20 he escaped. Arriving in the UK penniless and homeless, he spent time on the streets, sleeping in shop doorways and parks. He was eventually rescued by luck and the kindness of friends.

These adventures and many others are the basis for his novels, Umfaan’s Heroes and Laszlo’s Millions, which were published almost twenty years after the events they lie about. Both books were published by Andre Deutsch and received very well by the critics.

Since then he has published Sally's Road, which follows Sally in her battle to steal the drugs which can cure her cancer; Some Day Soon is a poetry collection. His latest novels are Soho Warrior (a gay thriller) published by Conrad Press, and Ragazzo, published by Alien Rabbit, a zany comic novel about opera, are out in 2024.