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This is an autobiographical work by the author of Blanket Boy's Moon, a novel that was extremely successful when it first appeared in 1953. Mopeli-Paulus was a remarkable figure and - in respect of his work in the Qwaqwa Legislative Assembly in the 1970s - controversial.
The World and the Cattle was completed in 1965 but has not been published in its entirety until now. The book's editor, whose name appears nowhere in the volume but who is known to be Stephen Gray, has compiled the text from three overlapping and, in minor respects, variant typescripts.
One question remains unanswered. In his introductory notes, Gray records that Mopeli-Paulus's second English-language novel, Turn to the Dark, was "jointly produced" with Miriam Basner. Of World, he notes: "As his language adviser, [Basner] had a hand in an early draft", but then states: "Let there be no suspicion of any ghosting or team-working here."
My conversations with Mopeli-Paulus and Basner in the early 1990s suggest otherwise, as both agreed that their working procedures on...