A Bekkersdal Marathon

The 22 short stories assembled in this volume, published in book format in 1971 by Human and Rousseau, were all written during the last 18 months of Herman Charles Bosman's life [1] .

[2] In small, underdeveloped rural towns, such as the one where Bosman worked, the living room (‘voorkamer’) of a local farmer would serve as a post office.

[2] In ‘A Bekkersdal Marathon’, the ‘voorkkamer’ of Jurie Steyn, a prosperous maize farmer, doubles as the village post office.

The plots, language and content of the stories help the reader to look beneath the veneer and to understand the farmers as scheming, greedy, superstitious, provincial country bumpkins.

Hypocritically, they routinely criticize Black people and English South Africans for foibles and failings which the farmers themselves display in ample measure.