Short stories
Een-en-twintig
Not translated into English
Jan Rabie · 1956
Synopsis
Twenty-one sketches and short stories, chosen by the author from about thirty texts and printed in the order in which they were written, so that one can follow the evolution of his manner from one piece to the next. Uys Krige, in his preface, speaks of prose poems: brief, lyrical pieces, each centred on a single impression, where surrealism sometimes passes. They deal with the responsibility of people toward one another, with violence and power, and with relations between whites and blacks in the country.
Context
The book appeared in 1956 from A. A. Balkema, in eighty-four pages, with a preface by Uys Krige; some of the texts had first been written in English, for European friends. Die Burger saw in it a talent that had not yet found its means of expression, while André P. Brink in 1957 hailed a work absolutely unique in Afrikaans literature. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism places it among the first clear signs of the Sestigers movement, and Hennie Aucamp regarded it as the leaven of the Afrikaans short story.
Who it is for
A short collection in Afrikaans, not translated into French; a possible way into the modernist prose of that language.
Prizes and reception
Brink wrote in 2000 that Afrikaans prose was never the same again after this small yellow collection.