Mafeking Road: and Other Stories by Herman Charles Bosman
My rating: 4/5 cats
what do i have to do to sell this book? i put it on table, and nothing. i make a lovely endcap just for archipelego books, and nothing. why won’t you believe me? isn’t it pretty, with its van gogh painting planted atop rich purple textured paper? and read the back: blurbs!! from people i have never heard of, but they are blurbs!! well, i have heard of publishers weekly, but they compare these stories to robert frost or bob dylan, so i don’t know if they can be trusted. but i know i can be. these are more like o henry or thomas hardy on a gentle day. they are mostly very short—under 10 pages—but they all have those snappy endings that cause laughter or empathy or both. they are cleverly written and also have shades of mark twain in them (does it help if i name-drop?) c’mon, is it the afrikaner thing? there’s a little racial inequality here, but if i can gloss over it, so can you! is it cuz he killed his stepbrother? because—glass houses, guys. we’ve all had those days. just read the book. i want someone else to have read it. i said please.
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