Matashona by Richard Pape

Matashona

by Richard Pape

Anthony Gibbs & Phillips, 1962, [First Edition], hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and marking to covers, a little foxing to endpapers, no inscriptions, price-clipped dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, small chips and tears (see photographs)

“Matashona is the first novel by Pape which can be described as a story of great strength and deep human emotions.  The title is the name of a prison in Africa, a terrible place divided into separate compounds for whites, blacks and coloureds.  This is a story of the coloureds, those unhappy people who are neither white nor black, who are looked upon as tainted by the pure-bred of all other  races, for one specific reason.  The reason is sexual.  They are human beings whose very souls are coloured by the cross-breeding of their parents and the fear of its results on future generations.  The blacker of them revert to black.  Some of the “go white”.  Yet if a white man falls in love, marries a white coloured girl, and carries her off to the enclaves wherein the white men dwell, their child when it is born may be black.”