Original Apartheid Hustler: The fiction and fabrications of Dugmore Boetie is the first biography and remarkable story of an enigma, Dugmore Boetie, a writer best known for the posthumously published Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost (1969), his humorous autobiographical novel.
Part literary biography, part historical detective story, the authors of Original Apartheid Hustler take the reader on a quest to understand Boetie’s background, his struggle to find his place as an artist and writer, and his collaborations and interactions with prominent Black and white intellectuals, including Ruth First, Nat Nakasa, Nadine Gordimer, and Barney Simon.
The book reveals how white patronage and publishing shaped Black literary production in South African writing in the 1950s–60s, showing collaboration, exploitation, and resilience across the global literary landscape.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Benjamin N. Lawrance is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (2014) amongst other books. He is a research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS).
Vusumuzi R. Kumalo is Senior Lecturer in History at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha. He is author of From Plough to Entrepreneurship: A History of African Entrepreneurs in Evaton 1905–1960s (2020) and South Africa’s Struggle for Independent Education (2023).
'Original Apartheid Hustler: The fiction and fabrications of Dugmore Boetie' is published by Wits University Press