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As a teenager, Fred Khumalo greeted his friends with a handshake
and the words "touch my blood". It implied friendship and trust.
The saying became his name. More than that, it became the way he
viewed the world. Everything touched Fred Khumalo. Twice he was
bewitched. Twice his father - the "country bumpkin" - took him to
inyangas to have the "demons" banished. Twice his mother - the
"city girl" - took him to a doctor to have the "fevers" cured. He
smoked dagga with conmen and criminals, he pickpocketed "corpses"
on the Friday night trains and worked as a gardener in the larney
suburbs. He studied journalism and shacked up with whiteys in a
commune, for a while the only darkie in a crazy swirl of booze,
drugs and sex. And then the bloody fighting that tore apart
KwaZulu/Natal in the 1980s touched his life and sucked him into a
place of horror and violence that threatened to destroy him. When a
friend died in his arms with the worlds "They really got me, Touch
my blood. They really got me", Khumalo realised that if he was to
outlive the madness, he had to run. From the journalist and Sunday
Times columnist comes a startlingly honest, humorous and poignant
autobiography about growing up in a time of laughter and heartache.
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Green Eyed Thieves (Paperback)
Imraan Coovadia; Edited by Annari van der Merwe
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R290
R229
Discovery Miles 2 290
Save R61 (21%)
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Ships in 3 - 5 working days
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This is a story of twin boys – identical in appearance but in
nothing else. Ashraf is all rage and action – a lover of the real.
Firoze is a dreamer and reader - a lover of the ideal. The Dawood
family is from Muslim Fordsburg. The father (formally at least) is
a merchant and the mother a part-time philosophy lecturer at Wits.
Their uncle, known universally as Ten-Per-Cent, lives in the house
and shares the ginger-beer factory business with his brother. The
story begins in Johannesburg but ends in the US. Ashraf is jailed
in Fort Dix Prison in Texas, and Firoze is just settling in New
York with his new young wife. Among the cast of characters are
Mohammed Atta (of 9/11 notoriety), George Bush, a Pakistani
Brigadier in Peshawar, a host of lawyers and assorted crooks of one
kind or another, plus various Korean massage parlour girls. Firoze
is the narrator and he tells the story while in prison – before
finally tricking Ashraf into changing places. The story offers
itself as an unconventional family memoir that tells the story of
the fortunes of a family of crooks – the green-eyed thieves. The
mother is an accomplished shoplifter; the father a master of all
forms of theft – including all the suits of the Aga Khan who
happened to be the same size as Dawood senior. Firoze, the
sophisticated dreamer, is not much good at thieving but Ashraf
lives for little else.
A young Zulu boy named Dumisani grows up in awe of the legendary
figure of Nelson Mandela. He thinks of Mandela not only as a great
leader of the oppressed, but also as a great seducer of women, and
it is in this aspect that he decides to emulate Mandela. A woman he
has been pursuing for a long time yields to his advances the day
the Black Pimpernel is captured. But Mandela's imprisonment renders
Dumisani impotent for 27 years.
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The Hidden Star (Paperback)
K. Sello Duiker; Edited by Annari van der Merwe
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R240
R207
Discovery Miles 2 070
Save R33 (14%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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Eleven-year-old Nolitye lives in Phola, on the outskirts of
Johannesburg, where children have been mysteriously disappearing.
Her best friends are Bheki - overweight and timid - and
bespectacled Four Eyes, who leaves the Spoilers, a gang under the
leadership of Rotten Nellie. At first, the story centres on the
threesome's efforts to survive victimisation at the hands of Four
Eyes' former gang. But when Nolitye picks up a magic stone, the
intrigue shifts to a magical realm that co-exists with ours. It
soon becomes clear that Nolitye, who has always taken comfort in
her granny's words, "you mess with a woman, you mess with a rock",
is the new seeker for the five pieces of the magic stone which,
when restored, will heal communities and bring them together again.
In a dream, Nolitye learns that her father, once a healer and
believed to have died in a mining accident, is being held captive
in the underworld and that the woman whom she believes to be her
mother is really a witch in the service of Ncitjana, the Evil One.
Nolitye then embarks on a quest to find the missing pieces of the
stone and to rescue her parents.
'n Vreeslose en ekstatiese verkenning van 'n bewussyn wat
aftakeling en verweer in die oog staar. In 'n stem eie aan Krog
word die taboes in die verskuiwende gemoedstoestande van die
menopouse met woede en verbale intensiteit beskryf. Intieme
verhoudings word skreiend eerlik ondersoek. In die laaste, meer
bepeinsende gedeelte word die intens persoonlike getemper. Die
fokus verskuif na Tafelberg – 'n alomteenwoordigee, durende
teenwoordigheid wat oor vier jaargetye waargeneem word; die
onnaspeurlike getuie van verandering, maar ironies ook 'n spieel
van die self en persoonlike pyn.
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Body bereft (Paperback, New)
Antjie Krog; Edited by Annari van der Merwe
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R260
R224
Discovery Miles 2 240
Save R36 (14%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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The taboos within the tidal moods of the menopause are described
with an anger and a verbal intensity that are uniquely Krog s.
Close relationships are searingly explored, occasionally in a
confrontational way, more often searching for resolution. In the
final meditative section, Table Mountain, a looming, symbolic and
androgynous godhead is contemplated as an abiding presence and
witness to the transience of human life. These dramatic, even
reckless poems, reaffirm Antjie Krog s status and bring an
altogether new and unique energy to South African English-language
poetry.Antjie Krog s iconic status as one of South Africa s most
popular and critically acclaimed poets began when she was eighteen,
with her first collection, Dogter van Jefta (1970). Almost four
decades later, this very different collection will confirm her
reputation with poems that blur and ravage the boundaries between
the lyrical and confessional, the private and public. From Body
Bereft, p.62fossil alphabetthe found fossil does not describehow my
blue eyes look past your eyeshow your black eyes look away from my
eyeshow my white forearm does not simply rest next to your black
forearmhow my sleek hair sleeps next to your frizzy hairthe fossil
does however describe in the finest vertebraehow the coast
blindingly kept on shouting after the continent that once was part
of herhow the fynbos undisputedly sniffed for her torn-away
friendshow the rusted rock along the coast longed for the drifted
bloodbrotherbut the fossil knows that once everything was
linkedthat we broached our hearts for one anotheronly we don t know
why we now sit with this stoney one-nessand so much furious
aversion "
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