Original Apartheid Hustler: The Fiction and Fabrications of Dugmore Boetie, by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Vusumuzi R. Kumalo

Dugmore Boetie is remembered for one book: Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost, a comic, picaresque account of a con man's life in apartheid Johannesburg, published in 1969 after the author had died. Readers took it as autobiography. But how much of it was true, and who was the man who wrote it?

Original Apartheid Hustler is the first biography of Boetie. Part literary biography and part historical detective work, it follows him through his search for a place as an artist and writer, and through his friendships and working relationships with figures including Ruth First, Nat Nakasa, Nadine Gordimer and Barney Simon. Along the way it opens up a wider story about how white patronage, editors and publishers shaped Black South African writing in the 1950s and 1960s, a story of collaboration and exploitation, but also of resilience.

Benjamin N. Lawrance is Professor of History at the University of Arizona and a research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. Vusumuzi R. Kumalo is a Senior Lecturer in History at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha.

Authors: Benjamin N. Lawrance and Vusumuzi R. Kumalo
Publisher: Wits University Press