This is a story of an almost vanished Africa; a world of myth and magic in which the indigenous peoples of the continent lived for uncountable centuries before the Europeans came to shatter it.The main character is a boy who has a relationship with this Africa not unlike Kipling's Kim with the antique world of India. Fran ois Joubert, whose Huguenot ancestors settled in Africa three hundred years ago, lives as a solitary child on his father's farm. 'Hunter's Drift'. Here, in the far interior of Africa, he experiences the wonder and mystery of an ageless, natural primitive life, his perception of it heightened by the influence of three people in particular - his Bushman nurse, the head herdsman of the local Matabele clan (his father's chosen partners in the pioneering of Hunter's Drift), and a hunter of legendary fame, now the chief ranger of a vast game reserve nearby.Fran ois' meeting with an untamed Bushman, Xhabbo, whose intuitive teaching nourishes his spirit; his strange pilgrimage to the distant krall of a powerful witch-doctor; his dramatic encounter and relationship with the daughter of a retired colonial governor; all are examples of African point and European counterpoint, in a highly original theme, moving to a strangely presaged and omened climax.
Since his first novel, In a Province, was published by The Hogarth Press in 1934, Laurens van der Post's books have made a profound impact on readers throughout the English-speaking world, and in many foreign-language editions. One after the other they have been admired for their brilliant descriptive writing, their imaginative insight and their compelling narrative power. His recent recognition by the Book Marketing Council as one of the twenty 'Best of British' writers is but one of the countless tributes that have been paid to his work.
Presented together now for the first time, Laurens van der Post's collected writings will reveal as never before the fullness of his perspective, wise and remarkably consistent vision. In all of them his inspiration has been that of an adventurous pioneer exploring not just the outward apects of a turbulent and troubled world but, at a deeper level, the patterns and paradoxes of human life, the myths and dreams of the human mind, the values and cultures of different peoples, the elusive springs of our own being.
