

Whatever age I was the day my father pointed out to me that being a fighter pilot meant I had to kill people and animals.


Lurking in the drawer where my mother keeps all my childhood masterpieces.

What was your favourite childhood book?

Jock of the Bushveld, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick; Chaka, Thomas Mofolo; The Snow Goose, Paul Gallico; Great Expectations, Dickens; The Little Princess and The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett; The Jungle Book, Kipling; A Sip of Jerepigo, Herman Charles Bosman; anything and everything by Mary Renault.


Steve Biko, I Write What I Like

Do you find the process of writing agony or pure pleasure?

Writing is pure bliss; not writing is pure purgatory.


Olive Schreiner

Who or what have been your most important influences?

Books and technology

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?  

Sleeping in my coffin.


Both.  It’s the literary equivalent of being sent on a luxury cultural Cook’s Tour.

Favourite film? 

Battleship Potemkin

Favourite Album

Miriam Makeba: Live At Bern’s Salonger, Stockholm, Sweden, 1966

Favourite Artist

Samia Halaby