The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories

The entire sequence of Bosman’s famous Oom Schalk Lourens stories, in one volume for the first time. Edited from authoritative sources, and accompanied by original illustrations, this gathering represents a feast of South Africa’s best-loved tales. The sixty pieces include all-time favourites like “In the Withaak’s Shade”, “Makapan’s Caves” and “Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy”, the Boer War classics “Mafeking Road” and “The Rooinek”, as well as several lesser-known treasures. “Bosman’s Oom Schalk Lourens is a literary creation without equal in South African literature. Precedents there are aplenty, to be sure . . ., but no storyteller figure looms as large in the popular imagination as Oom Schalk. His famous boast, “. . . I can tell the best stories of anybody in the Transvaal . . .” (“Mafeking Road”, 1935), has gone unchallenged for the seventy years since it was first uttered.” – Craig MacKenzie