Sperrgebiet by Bertoni Malcolm
Scarce-Privately Published.
Sperrgebiet by Bertoni Malcolm
Hardcover. English. Privately published. 2012. ISBN: 9780646574745. 141pp with numerous colour and some bw photos and map.
Mint condition in laminated hardcover.
Malcolm Bertoni’s book Sperrgebiet is about a rather small and seemingly insignificant piece of land, just 250 km long and 100 km wide located along the coastline of the Namib Desert of southern Namibia. But this is also a book of a very unique place that is virtually unknown and virtually unseen. A place that exists in a small corner of a unique desert, in a unique country, on a unique continent. A place that will grab at you and make you, even if just for a few moments, take notice of where you are. This place is many things. It is uncompromising nature that is ruthless, bleak, pitiless and menacing; yet stunning and spectacular. A place of beauty, wonder, remorse, hatred, sorrow and affection. This is the Sperrgebiet and it is all of these. It will not leave one untouched or indifferent and will cause a reaction, whatever it might be. Originally the Sperrgebiet did not exist; not in name anyway. It was just another small piece of the world in another inhospitable desert along another remote coast. So why is there a Sperrgebiet? What caused it to be created in this corner of the world? And what is it actually? Firstly. The name and where it came from. Sperrgebiet means Forbidden Area in German. It came about as a result of the German colonialists closing off a vast area of the southern Namib Desert over a century ago when diamonds were discovered in 1908 in southern Namibia. The seemingly lifeless and empty piece of land that has been excluded from the general public and stretching from the Orange River in the south up past Luderitz in the north. With an area of 26,000 sqkm, it will remain closed as long as diamonds are worth mining, although there are changes occurring and the area is, in principle anyway, open to the public.
