Published by University Of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005, hardcover, illustrated, 60 pages, condition: as new.
In 1956, seven amateur adventurers set off from Natal (South Africa) in a decrepit five-ton truck named "Kalahari Polka," on "the craziest expedition ever to enter the unknown." The goal was to make archaeological history by locating a mythical Lost City in a remote range of mountains deep in the Kalahari Desert. Included in the party was Alan Paton, acclaimed author of Cry, the Beloved Country, chairman of the newly-formed South African Liberal Party, and a leading political voice of his time. Lost City of the Kalahari is Paton's hitherto unpublished account of the odd adventure. Recounted with dry, self-deprecating wit and supplemented by hand-drawn maps, provisions lists, photographs, 8mm film stills, and other fascinating memorabilia from the period, this entertaining travelogue brings to life the quirky cast of characters, rough discomforts of the journey, tedium of unvarying landscape, vast desert vistas, and encounters with wild Bushmen and other Kalahari people. And through it all, emerges Paton's own deep love for the austere landscape that "one can never have too much of because it is like breathing."
Alan Paton, a native son of South Africa, was born in Pietermaritzburg, in the province of Natal, in 1903. Paton's initial career was spent teaching in schools for the sons of rich, white South Africans, But at thirty, he suffered a severe attack of enteric fever, and in the time he had to reflect upon his life, he decided that he did not want to spend his life teaching the sons of the rich. He got a job as principal of Diepkloof Reformatory, a huge prison school for delinquent black boys, on the edge of Johannesburg. He worked at Diepkloof for ten years, and at the end of it Paton felt so strongly that he needed a change, that he sold his life insurance policies to finance a prison-study trip that took him to Scandinavia, England, and the United States. It was during this time that he unexpectedly wrote his first published novel, "Cry, the Beloved Country". It stands as the single most important novel in South African literature. Alan Paton died in 1988 in South Africa.
