This delightful collection of humorous stories is set in the
mythical village of Ystervarkrivier (Ace-Turf-Arc-Riff-Ear) - a
forgotten outpost of the Drakeniqua Municipality, somewhere in
South Africa. The village has a church, a bottle store and a golf
course, but not necessarily in that order. The central motif is the
nine-hole golf course built by a displaced Yorkshireman, Harry
Corkaby. The stories detail Harry's attempts to understand South
Africa in the post-apartheid years and to make money for his
retirement by encouraging people to play on his folly. The action
is contemporary, reflecting current events such as Tiger's divorce,
Seve's death and Louis Oosthuizen's Open Championship, but the
setting is timeless, a pastoral South Africa with little racial
tension. The rural setting allows incursions by such oddities as a
one-eyed ostrich, a troop of violent baboons, Nguni cattle being
fattened up for lobola and the eponymous porcupine ("Ystervark"
means Porcupine in Afrikaans). Meet the richest man in the area,
Inkosi Dlamini, as well as the poorest, Thabiso 'Joseph'
Tshabalala, Harry's employee, and the rest of the entertaining cast
- Ambrose Papenfus (bookworm and proprietor of the bottle store),
Jannie Venter (the local sheep farmer; as strong as an ox and
almost half as nice smelling), Frikkie Venter (teenage son of
Jannie; rather more in love with golf than with his girlfriend,
Marietje de Bruyn), Beulah de Bruyn (sturdily built, middle-aged
cattle farmer who keeps her daughter chaste), S'bu Dlamini (foppish
heir to the separate fortunes of his divorced parents, Inkosi
Dlamini and Edna Gqobo-Dlamini, Mayor of the Drakeniqua
Municipality) and Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar Pietersen
(soldiers of fortune, down on their luck and, most Saturday nights,
down on their knees). This is farming country with a very small and
spread out population, but the community comes together to pray and
play golf.
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