Macabre, grim and tragic

Abstract

Apart from commercial novels such as those of Wilbur Smith, the stories and miscellaneous writing of Herman Charles Bosman (1905±1951) have become amongst the most popular works in South African English literature. Although they have seldom been out of print once they gained a wide audience in the early 1960s, the new Anniversary Editions of his works under the general editorship of Stephen Gray and Craig MacKenzie, running into nine volumes, are particularly welcome. They are attractively produced, thoroughly edited and are prefaced by useful, scholarly researched introductions which are never- theless eminently readable. Thus, the reader is provided with important background material con- cerning Bosman's vision of literature, his sense of South Africa and its political destiny.