Best stories and humour of Herman Charles Bosman

By Herman Charles Bosman

This reissued collection contains the best of Bosman’s stories and humour, previously published in two volumes: Starlight on the Veld: Best of Herman Charles Bosman’s Stories and Recognising Blues: Best of Herman Charles Bosman’s Humour.

Starlight on the Veld is a collection of 25 of Bosman’s finest stories – the most striking, the most moving, the most memorable. Oom Schalk classics like “Mafeking Road”, “In the Withaak’s Shade”, “The Rooinek” and “Makapan’s Caves” are included, alongside ‘Voorkamer’ pieces like “School Concert” and “Birth Certificate”. And in famous stories like “A Boer Rip van Winkel” and “Old Transvaal Story” we hear the voice of the author musing self-ironically on the art of storytelling.

Recognising Blues: Best of Herman Charles Bosman’s Humour gathers together some 30 pieces across the full extent of Bosman’s career, from schoolboy gags through to last laughs. As Bosman himself said, he was known for having a vein of humour running through his work that made him popular with his faithful readers. This collection includes well-known gems like “A Bekkersdal Marathon” and “A Visit to Shanty Town”, where his satirical irony ran at full force, through to some previously uncollected essays and reports which show him always to have been South Africa’s most genial commentator.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Human & Rousseau
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780798163712

Herman Charles Bosman

Herman Charles Bosman (1905-51) completed and published his prison memoir, Cold Stone Jug, in early 1949. Fifty years later it is republished here in a restored text following the original edition corrected by him for his publisher, the APB Bookstore in Johannesburg, where it was a fast seller, greeted as an important addition to the work of the post-war new generation of South African English-language writers. As the introduction here shows in a wealth of fresh detail, Cold Stone Jug’s climb to classic status as the foundational text of the country’s prison literature has been slow but sure. It still continues to fascinate new readers. A work that pushed back the boundaries of what was suitable subject matter for literary treatment in South Africa, Cold Stone Jug has remained as shocking – and as grimly humorous – as when it first appeared. This is the closest Bosman came to writing an autobiography, restricted to the years 1926-30 during which he served his term, sentenced for murder. The original edition of Cold Stone Jug was dedicated “to Helena, my wife” and had the following epigraph: A chronicle: being the unimpassioned record of a somewhat lengthy sojourn in prison.