And here is #NgũgĩWaThiong’o writing about #AlexLaGuma -- this text accompanied the republication of A Soviet Journey https://africasacountry.com/2017/08/alex-la-guma-in-the-words-of-ngugi-wa-thiongo/

Like many realists #AlexLaGuma makes extensive and self-conscious use of simile, which interrupts continuity and time in intriguing ways. A crowd gathering around a police shooting: 'The muttering remained, the threatening sound of a storm-tossed ocean breaking against a rocky shoreline. / "Shot him in cold blood, the bastards." [...] The mutter of dark water eroding the granite cliffs, sucking at the sand-filled cracks and dissolving the banks of clay.'

Made a start on reading #AlexLaGuma -- A Walk in the Night, 1967. #CapeTown District 6, cafes, clubs, wine, police crimes, prison (a Coloured Corps story), boxing, occasional glimpses of goosies -- but mainly men's stories. It's vivid #realism sometimes hard-boiled, but attentive to texture and the materiality of the urban world, and leaving work for the reader to do to complete or imagine the ends of stories, that are shot through with sharp moments of poetry. #SouthAfrica #AfricanLiterature