Mafeking Road and other stories - Herman Charles Bosman

Herman Charles Bosman’s best-loved stories about the Marico District, published here for the first time in the form intended by the author.

Bosman’s storyteller figure Oom Schalk Lourens takes us into the world of the concertina-player who leaves the Marico for fame and glory; the girl who returns from finishing school to dazzle and dupe the Marico yokels; the Boer War soldier with a tragic story to tell about his son; the legendary leopard of Abjaterskop; the man who kills his wife and buries her under the dung floor of his voorkamer…

Jealousies, hatreds, loves and betrayals – the entire range of human emotions laid bare in a manner at once humorous and satirical, romantic and ironic. Mafeking Road reveals to us a world quaint and distant… and yet powerfully familiar.

Bosman’s classic collection of short stories, edited for the first time from original versions, with an introduction and notes on the texts.