The Stone Country
Will be published approx. on 10. December 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
202 pages
978-1-0359-3051-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Stone Country draws directly on Alex La Guma's own experience of South African prisons, following political detainee George Adams as he is thrown together with gangsters, murderers and the condemned in a Cape Town jail. Among them are Butcherboy, a thuggish gang leader in league with the guards, and the Casbah Kid, a hardened teenager facing the gallows. La Guma renders this world with extraordinary realism and moral complexity, revealing how solidarity and humanity persist even in the most brutalising of environments. Published in 1967, it remains one of the most powerful works to emerge from apartheid-era South Africa.
Discover more from the APOLLO AFRICA series: the new home for 100 timeless works from the legendary Heinemann African Writers Series.
Discover more from the APOLLO AFRICA series: the new home for 100 timeless works from the legendary Heinemann African Writers Series.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
205 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-0359-3051-7 (9781035930517)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Alex La Guma was born in District Six, Cape Town, the son of a prominent anti-apartheid activist, and grew up immersed in left-wing politics. His political career encompassed membership of the Young Communist League, the South African Communist Party and the editorship of the left-wing journal New Age; he was imprisoned multiple times and eventually placed under house arrest. In 1966 he and his family left South Africa on permanent exit visas, and he continued to write from exile in London, before eventually serving as the ANC's chief representative in Cuba, where he died in 1985. His five novels - including A Walk in the Night (1962), The Stone Country (1967) and In the Fog of the Season's End (1972) - are regarded as essential documents of the apartheid era.