Time of the Butcherbird

In his final novel, renowned author Alex La Guma explores the tensions of a South African town fraught with the desire for revenge.



Out in the flat, featureless countryside, a small mining town in South Africa is refused access to water by their oppressors. Knowing that the rain is their last chance for survival, all they can do is wait...



As the dry summer wears on, the white Afrikaner townspeople are unaware of the storm brewing around them as, deep in the bush, a shepherd recalls the riddle of the butcherbird.



Glimpsing into precolonial days and the aftermath of the Boer War, Time of the Butcherbird is a powerful reminder of the communities that were wrecked by conflict and dispossessed of their own land.



'The greatest South African novelist of the 20th century.' The Times

'A central figure alongside Chinua Achebe [in] the making and consolidation of modern African literature.' Ngugi wa Thiong'o