Rain Bull and other Tales from the San | Short Stories & Fiction Anthologies

Eugène N. Marais

The well-loved and famous Dwaalstories is at last available in English. Eugène Marais was one of the first Afrikaans writers to capture indigenous stories in the original Boesman-Afrikaans dialect. The charm and enchantment of these four simple tales, first published in 1921, are timeless. No reader or listener can stay unmoved by lines like these from Joggom Konterdans’s “song of the rain”:

First over the mountain top she looks shyly, And her eyes are bashful; And she laughs softly. And from afar she beckons with one hand. Her bracelets shine and her beads shimmer; Softly she calls.

With beautiful line drawings by the well-known artist Katrine Harries, this is a very special book – also as a gift. The translation, done with a fine lyricism and narrative rhythm, is by Jacques Coetzee.