JM Coetzee’s English translation of Wilma Stockenström’s Afrikaans novel, Die kremetartekspedisie, will be re-published in April this year by Archipelago Books, a nonprofit press devoted to contemporary and classic international literature. Guernica magazine has shared a sneak peek from The Expedition to the Baobab Tree, in which the protagonist, a slave, recalls witnessing a procession of people newly condemned to servitude.
Enjoy the haunting prose by Stockenström, masterfully rendered in English by Coetzee – two of South Africa’s finest writers:
If I could write. Even then, melancholy would take possession of me. Wearily, I take the path to the river, there in the cool to fill my being with the sounds of my sister-being, to refresh myself in the modest scents of pigeonwood and mitzeerie, to let my gaze end in a tangle of monkey ropes and fern arches and the slowly descending leaves, and to find rest, all day long, all night long.
There is always an ape to defile a sanctuary. How irritated I get when animals do not stay within the limits of their animal nature but want to address me on my level. For instance, the troop of samangos in the top of the waterberry tree. As if they were being sold short by me, as if I represented a great threat, as if I did not also belong, but had to be driven off with reproaches and deep warnings. Glare at me impudently indeed. Reprimand me indeed. Confront me and show disapproval indeed.
Book details
- Die kremetartekspedisie by Wilma Stockenstrom
EAN: 9780798144292
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- The Childhood of Jesus by JM Coetzee
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EAN: 9781846557385
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- Hierdie mens by Wilma Stockenström
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EAN: 9780798163736
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- The Expedition to the Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenstrom, translated by JM Coetzee
EAN: 9781935744924
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