Unto dust and other stories - Herman Charles Bosman

Condition: Pre-loved

One thing that certain thoughtless people sometimes hint at about my stories is that nothing ever seems to happen in them. Then there is another kind of person who goes even further, and he says that the stories I tell are all stories that he has heard before, somewhere, long ago he can’t remember when, exactly, but somewhere at the back of his mind he knows that it is not a new story.

I have heard that remark passed quite often which is not surprising, seeing that I really don’t know any new stories. But the funny part of it is that these very people will come around, say, ten years later, and ask me to tell them another story. And they will say, then, because of what they have learnt of life in between, that the older the better (Oom Schalk Lourens, The Selon’s Rose). 

This revised edition of Unto Dust gathers Oom Schalk’s last tales and concludes the sequence begun in Mafeking Road and continued in Seed-time and Harvest. It includes famous stories (Unto Dust, Funeral Earth,The Traitor’s Wife), two previously unpublished ones (Bush Telegraph and Tryst by the Vaal) and others previously uncollected and barely known. Vintage Bosman at his most masterly, written in an intense last period. Edited from original versions, with an introduction and notes on the texts. - Goodreads