Unto Dust by Herman Charles Bosman

Unto Dust (Collectible Bosman Oom Schalk Lourens Stories)

Herman Charles Bosman's Last Tales of Oom Schalk Lourens, Told on the Old Transvaal Veld

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Unto Dust
• Author: Herman Charles Bosman
• Editor: Lionel Abrahams
• Publisher: Human & Rousseau, Cape Town ; Johannesburg
• Publication Date: 1991
• ISBN-13: 9780798128292
• ISBN-10: 0798128291
• Edition Details: Third, completely reset edition, Human & Rousseau, 1991. Second impression, 1992. Edited by Lionel Abrahams.
• Binding: Publisher's illustrated paperback wrappers, uniform edition cover with a Dan Swart painting.
• Physical Format: Trade paperback (large softcover), 164 pages. Slim volume.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good (VG)
• Exterior / Wraps: The illustrated wrappers are clean and bright, with no visible tears or creasing to the front cover, back cover or spine. There is a slight curl to the front cover. The spine lettering is fully legible. The page block edges are lightly toned.
• Interior: The text pages are toned a uniform cream to tan, consistent with age and paper stock. A few tiny specks appear at the foot of page 157. The binding is tight and the pages are clean, with no writing or markings seen.
• The Dust Jacket: Not Applicable (As Issued)

Synopsis & Historical Value

Unto Dust gathers short stories narrated by Oom Schalk Lourens, the shrewd and wryly humorous storyteller of the old western Transvaal. Set against the backdrop of the Boer republics and the years that followed the Second Anglo-Boer War, the tales capture the character and daily life of earlier Afrikaner communities on the Groot Marico veld.

The collection brings together Oom Schalk's last stories and concludes the sequence begun in Mafeking Road. The title is taken from Genesis 3:19, and the title story is read as a pointed piece of irony on the notion that Afrikaner dust is superior to that of Africans.

The stories were first published posthumously in 1963, edited by Lionel Abrahams. This copy is from the publisher's uniform edition of Bosman titles, a handsome and readable edition of one of the cornerstones of South African short fiction.

Author Profile: Herman Charles Bosman

Herman Charles Bosman (1905-1951) was born at Kuils River near Cape Town and is widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short-story writer. In 1926 he shot and killed his stepbrother; his death sentence was commuted to ten years, of which he served four.

His stories were first collected in Mafeking Road (1947), and he drew on his prison years for Cold Stone Jug (1949), a collection of sardonic, comic prison sketches. Much of his remaining work, including Unto Dust, Jurie Steyn's Post Office and A Bekkersdal Marathon, appeared after his death. His life is the subject of biographies by Valerie Rosenberg and Stephen Gray.

Herman Charles Bosman Unto Dust · Oom Schalk Lourens stories · Bosman short stories · Groot Marico stories · Human & Rousseau Bosman · South African short stories · Lionel Abrahams Bosman