Search results for ""author james whyle""
Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd Walk
The true and epic story of a boy's survival in the face of impossible odds. Walk tells the story of a deadly scramble down the wild coastline of what would become present-day South Africa and should be required reading for anyone interested in the early history of this complex nation and impeccably crafted literary fiction alike. This length of coastline is a hike that every South African should have the privilege of taking. But for the survivors of the wreck of the Grosvenor as they clambered onto the rocks on 5 August 1782, they might as well have crash-landed on Mars. The shipwrecked decided to walk to the Cape of Good Hope, though their ordeal starting at Lambasi in northern Pondoland ended in the dune deserts not far from what we now know as Port Elizabeth - for those few who survived it. Walk takes the reader, step by step, day by day, on William Hubberly's horrific trek. While indisputably fiction, Walk sails a good deal closer to the historical truth than most nonfiction you will read and is a haunting parable on the meeting of Europe and Africa.
£14.95
Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd The book of war
The story of a boy who comes into manhood during war, this book follows an illiterate European child who is stranded on the southern tip of Africa. As the British and the Xhosa have been engaged in battle for 80 years, the young man signs up for the conflict in the hope of steady meals and a few shillings a month. His new commander, the Captain—hardly more than a boy himself—commands an assortment of convicts, sailors, and drunkards culled from the port at the Cape of Good Hope. While the group travels through a landscape prowled by wild beasts, the distinction between man and animal becomes increasingly blurred. Based on firsthand accounts of the 8th Xhosa War, this book converts the bare facts into something terrible and strange.
£14.95