Book description
This is a story of an almost vanished Africa; a world of myth and
magic in which the indigenous peoples of the continent lived for
uncountable centuries before the Europeans came to shatter it.
The main character is a boy who has a relationship with this Africa
not unlike Kipling's Kim with the antique world of India. François
Joubert, whose Huguenot ancestors settled in Africa three hundred
years ago, lives as a solitary child on his father's farm. 'Hunter's
Drift'. Here, in the far interior of Africa, he experiences the wonder
and mystery of an ageless, natural primitive life, his perception of
it heightened by the influence of three people in particular - his
Bushman nurse, the head herdsman of the local Matabele clan (his
father's chosen partners in the pioneering of Hunter's Drift), and a
hunter of legendary fame, now the chief ranger of a vast game reserve nearby.
François' meeting with an untamed Bushman, Xhabbo, whose intuitive
teaching nourishes his spirit; his strange pilgrimage to the distant
krall of a powerful witch-doctor; his dramatic encounter and
relationship with the daughter of a retired colonial governor; all are
examples of African point and European counterpoint, in a highly
original theme, moving to a strangely presaged and omened climax.
Laurens van der Post was born in South Africa in 1906, the
thirteenth of fifteen children in a family of Dutch and French
Huguenot origins. He grew up in the heart of Bushman country, a
thousand miles from the sea, before going on a long voyage to Japan
that was a to prove a formative experience and vital in later life. He
settled in England in the 1930s, writing and farming until the
outbreak of the war, when he joined the British army and served with
distinction in the Western Desert, Abyssinia, Burma and the Far East.
Taken prisoner by the Japanese, he was held in captivity for three
years before returning to active service as a member of Lord
Mountbatten's staff in Indonesia and, later, as military attaché to
the British minister in Java.
Since 1949 he has taken part in many official expeditions and
missions to Africa, and his journey in search of the Bushmen in 1957
formed the basis of his famous documentary film, 'The Lost World of
the Kalahari'. Other television films he has made include 'A Region of
Shadow', 'All Africa Within Us'. And a three-part series on the life
and work of Carl Gustav Jung, whom he met after the war and grew to
know as a close personal friend. The highly acclaimed film 'Merry
Christmas, Mr Lawrence', released in 1983, was based on his book
The Seed and the Sower.
Laurens van der Post was awarded the C. B.E for services in the
field, and in 1980 he was knighted. With his wife, Ingaret Giffard,
Sir Laurens divides his time in England between his home in Chelsea
and a cottage in Suffolk.
