Böcker av Alex La Guma

Written from Alex La Guma's first-hand experiences in apartheid South Africa, In the Fog of the Seasons' End is a short but powerful novel, unflinching in its depiction of the day-to-day realities of segregation and the secret underground movement that fought against it.For Beukes and Elia, undercover protestors of apartheid, every day holds the threat of discovery and imprisonment. With the threat of torture hanging over their heads, every leaflet, every phone call, every outspoken word puts them closer to capture. As the stakes get impossibly high, the only thing holding them together is their refusal to submit to the regime - but even that is proving more difficult by the day.An intense and well-crafted plot, Alex La Guma unravels the truth behind the underground anti-apartheid movement.'The greatest South African novelist of the 20th century.' The Times'His spirit of hope lives on in the books he left us. He is a central figure alongside Chinua Achebe.' Ngugi wa Thiong'o

In this previously banned collection of seven short stories, Alex La Guma vividly reveals the plight of the poor and oppressed in apartheid South Africa.'The pub, like pubs all over the world, was a place for debate and discussion... Where the disillusioned gained temporary hope, where acts of kindness were considered and murders planned.'The title story, 'A Walk in the Night', introduces the figure of Michael Adonis, a factory worker who loses his job after an argument with a white supervisor. Adonis's subsequent descent into helpless rage is played out in rich detail, illuminating the toxic effects of poverty, police brutality, and gang violence.Characterised by his striking style and colourful dialogue, La Guma's stories explore experiences of racism and social inequality in various settings, from an overcrowded prison to a Portuguese restaurant.Each story lays bare the struggles of those living in 1960s South Africa, offering poignant moments of hope and cementing Alex La Guma as one of the most important writers of his time.'The greatest South African novelist of the 20th century.' The Times 'A Walk in the Night ... achieved in 90 pages what other African writers had tried to achieve in the course of many years.' Wole Soyinka 'His spirit of hope lives on in the books he left us. He is a central figure alongside Chinua Achebe [in] the making and consolidation of modern African literature.' Ngugi wa Thiong'o

In his final novel, Alex La Guma explores the tensions of a South African town fraught with the desire for revenge. Glimpsing into precolonial days and the aftermath of the Boer War, Time of the Butcherbird is a powerful reminder of the communities that were wrecked by conflict and dispossessed of their own land.Out in the flat, featureless countryside, a small mining town in South Africa is refused access to water. Knowing that the rain is their last chance for survival, all they can do now is wait...As the oppressive summer wears on, the white Afrikaner townspeople are unaware of the storm brewing around them. In the bush, a shepherd recalls the riddle of the butcherbird.An impactful and incisive novel, Time of the Butcherbird cements Alex La Guma as one of South Africa's most prominent political writers, exposing the ugly reality of the self-professed 'civilised' oppressors and a society brimming with anger.'The greatest South African novelist of the 20th century.' The Times'[Alex La Guma] is a central figure alongside Chinua Achebe [in] the making and consolidation of modern African literature.' Ngugi wa Thiong'o

One of South Africa‿s best-known writers during the apartheid era, Alex La Guma was a lifelong activist and a member of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. Persecuted and imprisoned by the South African regime in the 1950s and 60s, La Guma went into exile in the United Kingdom with his wife and children in 1966, eventually serving as the ANC‿s diplomatic representative for Latin America and the Caribbean in Cuba. Culture and Liberation captures a different dimension of his long writing career by collecting his political journalism, literary criticism, and other short pieces published while he was in exile.   This volume spans La Guma‿s political and literary life in exile through accounts of his travels to Algeria, Lebanon, Vietnam, Soviet Central Asia, and elsewhere, along with his critical assessments of Paul Robeson, Nadine Gordimer, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Pablo Neruda, among other writers. The first dedicated collection of La Guma‿s exile writing, Culture and Liberation restores an overlooked dimension of his life and work, while opening a window on a wider world of cultural and political struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Â

A Soviet Journey by the South African activist and novelist Alex La Guma (1925-1985) is one of the longest and most substantive accounts of the USSR by an African writer. It is a rare and important document of the antiapartheid struggle and the cold war period.