SMALL CIRCLE OF BEINGS - GALGUT, DAMON 0.50KG IN SOUTH AFRICA

Harcover. English. Publisher: Lowry. 1988. First Edition. 221pp. Good condition in hardcover with somewhat worn dw. Damon Galgut's first collection of stories transports us to 1980s South Africa where politics begins at home. The family - that small circle of beings where love should flourish - can be an arid and alienating territory where hatred and violence may ignite. The title novella is set in a house far out of town, at the end of a dust road that rises up into the mountains. The desperate bondage of family life is revealed to a mother as she sits at her son's bedside where he lies sick, perhaps dying. Galgut's understated prose unpicks the emotional paradoxes of family life with a surprising, surreal twist.