THE NUMBER by Jonny Steinberg

On 9 June 2003, a 43-year-old coloured man named Magazine Wentzel walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town.  Behind him lay a lifetime career in the 28s, South Africa's oldest and most reviled prison gang, for decades rumoured to have specialised in rape and robbery.  In front of him lay the prospect of a law-abiding future, and life in a household of eight adults and six children, none of whom earned a living.

Author Jonny Steinberg met Wentzel in prison in the dying months of 2002.  By the time Wentzel was released, he and Steinberg had spent more than 50 hours discussing his life experiences.  The Numbers is an account of their conversations and of Steinberg's journeys to the places and people of Wentzel's past.

Most of all, the book is an account of memory and identity, of his project to make some sense of his bewildering past and something worthwhile in his future.  When Steinberg met him, Wentzel was embarking on a quest to retrieve the name he had been given at birth.  He was also beginning the daunting task of gathering together the estranged children he had sired into a nuclear family. 

Soft cover, very good condition.