Litnet

He grew up in a good household near Durban. At a delicate age, he learned that he was adopted. It shook his sense of identity, as he no longer was the boy he had been brought up to be. In his recently completed memoir, Lucky bastard, Anthony Akerman focuses primarily on how his life was shaped by the knowledge of his adoption.

"He made a late and untheatrical entrance and stood there catching his breath as he faced us first-year drama students, expectantly clutching our brand-new copies of Brooks and Heilman’s Understanding drama."

"I asked if I could interview him about directing before he returned home, and he readily agreed. I opened a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau and turned on the tape recorder. I was 32 and Athol was 49."

"Athol was spending increasingly longer periods working away from South Africa, but he always returned home to write. He told me he couldn’t write anywhere else. He had to be at home."

"The wheels obviously come off, or we wouldn’t have a story. I won’t give anything away, but trust me when I say that Heyns is a masterful storyteller and the narrative often veers off in quite unexpected directions."

André Brink tells the story in letters to Anthony Akerman: "But still, I’m going to try my damnedest. For the amended Act, due to come out next year, may be the last nail in our little literary coffin."

"But who was the mysterious MAB who, on a visit to Rhodesia, had paid 4/6 to a second-hand bookdealer in Salisbury – either The Treasure Trove or The Book Exchange, according to my informants – and ‘passed it on with warm affection’?"

"The reader is required to assemble and make sense of disparate story fragments and construct meaning in much the same way Thalia tries to make sense of her quest. It’s fascinating, absorbing, challenging and well researched."

"Lategan also shares moments of beauty, happiness and warmth in a narrative that is insightful, ironic, humorous and compassionate. And it’s a page-turner."

"Leon de Kock’s well-judged biography presents us with a complex portrait of a great writer beset by a fundamental loneliness. All the sex, all the affairs and all the marriages were a frequently misguided attempt to end this loneliness."