Jacaranda in the Night by Bosman, Herman Charles

ISBN: 9780798140843

Publisher: Human & Rousseau (Pty) Ltd 38406

Paperback, 216 pages

Charles Bosman's first book, the decadent novel of "dark strong life. thick with the tides of surging turgidity within the flesh. of blood throbbing in its purple intensities and the white flame of desire." Here is Bosman's cool analysis of maleness and sadism down Voortrekker Street in the South African dorps of old, in the days of General Smuts's collapsing Union. Here is the seamy underside of boardinghouse and school common room, exposed with masterly psychological sharpness, the erotic drives laid bare as they had never been so explicitly before. Bosman's tale of a triangular passion leading to brutal murder reads just as intriguingly today as when its hot Chapter Six, thought to be pornographic, shocked its first readers. This text of Jacaranda in the Night, complete and unabridged, is edit ed from the original printing, with an introduction placing it within the post-war Johannesburg literary school of hard realism which it served to shape.