Herman Charles Bosman Biography

South African short-story writer and journalist, born at Kuils River, Cape Province. Though of Afrikaner background, he acquired an English education in Johannesburg. Cold Stone Jug (1949) is a sardonic account, bristling with humour and irony, of his four and a half years in prison for fatally shooting his stepbrother during a quarrel. His short stories, which were much admired by Roy Campbell, describe the rigours of rural Afrikaner life, often with broad humour resembling that of American frontier writers such as Mark Twain. Collections of his short stories, which have increasingly enhanced his reputation, include Mafeking Road (1947), Unto Dust (1963), Jurie Steyn's Post Office (1971), and A Bekkersdal Marathon (1971). His two novels are Jacaranda in the Night (1947) and Willemsdorp (1977). Other publications include A Cask of Jerepigo (1957), which contains essays and sketches, and his Collected Works (1981), in two volumes.