Northern Trip 2023 Gallery
“The latest book from one of our South African members, Williams Dicey of Ceres, is now available.”
click here to buy
Our members write on many subjects, and this is a collection of essays about modern South Africa. It is in a different class to William Dicey’s (already good) first novel, Borderline. He sees to the scraped bone of truth in odd situations like a Bushveld meat festival. There robust farm girls are crowned for their beauty – literally alongside the upside down carcasses of Karoo lambs. This is the final resting place for the hardworking little word ‘fit’ – that means beautiful (of girls) in the town, and ready for slaughter (of beasts) in the countryside. Like Surtees, Dicey is a writer who disdains to spare himself or us – he observes, he thinks hard, and then he tells it exactly as it is. One of the stories is about paying his farm workers, and his frustration at their naivete. One of the stories is about a close relation who was murdered, apparently by a rent boy he was regularly using. Nothing easy about writing that one in the corn-fed society of Capetown and Castle lager. He doesn’t shrink from it, or from any of the other insights into what his land is becoming and why. And there is rage in such courage, bokke.
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