The worst part of life on the Springbok Vlakte is the second half of winter. There is no rain whatever and the sun is a merciless tyrant, terrorising humans, burning the leaves off plants and turning the ground beneath your feet to dust. Spring is a different matter entirely. It
We were living on the edge of the Knysna forest on the southern coast of Africa when my lovely old Olivetti typewriter and I parted ways in a traumatic fashion. When my eldest daughter presented me with a computer for my birthday I realised the personal computer had arrived, turning
I started writing novels on an old Olivetti portable typewriter. I loved my Olivetti. At that time the IBM electric typewriters were the latest and most desired technology, but they were out of my price range. Also, they were heavy, whereas I could take my little portable with me wherever
Probably because South Africa is still a new democracy, and yes, twenty-three years makes us still new, political correctness stalks the land. It gets in the way of novelists, movie makers, visual artists, in fact talented people of every kind who think for themselves. In some company, if you are
All of my Yudel Gordon novels take place at least partly in government offices, the early ones in offices of the Apartheid government and the latter ones offices of the democratic government. Creating a convincing picture of either can be a challenge. When writing about government and what takes place
South Africa has landscapes of every type. For a medium sized country the variety of settings for a novel is astonishing. In romantic stories and rural epics the landscape often plays an important role. We have all seen Gerald O’Hara looking across his cotton fields and telling us that “Land
All but one of my thrillers have Yudel Gordon as the central character. Down the years, many people have asked me on whom I based him. Usually I’ve tried to avoid the question. The truth is that he is an amalgamation of three real men, all of them psychologists, and
For decades serious South African writers wrote largely about the ways Apartheid affected themselves and their countrymen. It was such a singular system, it contained so many aspects and such powerful material emerged from it, that it was impossible to ignore. Then came 1994 and for all of us everything
Apart from only Klara’s Visitors, all my novels have been set in South Africa. This is not unusual among novelists from any country. Writers set their stories against backgrounds that they understand and have experienced. Among South African writers this is particularly true. When you live in a country as
This is the story behind the writing Of The Robben Island List by Wessel Ebersohn Pretty much in the centre of Table Bay, overlooked by Table Mountain, one of the seven wonders of the world, just ten kilometres from Cape Town, lies a small island with a sad history. Over the