Mafeking Road and Other Stories

Afrikaner Bosman (1905–1951) killed his stepbrother in 1926 and was sentenced to death, but was released in 1930 and soon began traveling. This, his first book of three published during his lifetime, was written in English and published in 1947, and it is now a classic of South African literature. The pacing and perspective of Bosman’s tales—framed “as told by” the perfectly named character Oom Schalk Laurens—are unlike anything else in English. As these 21 fable-like stories of hard luck on the veld unfold, a captivating picture of an intimate, then vanishing (and now vanished) world unfolds. The closest comparison may be Robert Frost poems or Bob Dylan songs. (June)