Stone Country

Alex La Guma was born in District Six, Cape Town, the son of a prominent anti-apartheid activist, and grew up immersed in left-wing politics. His political career encompassed membership of the Young Communist League, the South African Communist Party and the editorship of the left-wing journal New Age; he was imprisoned multiple times and eventually placed under house arrest. In 1966 he and his family left South Africa on permanent exit visas, and he continued to write from exile in London, before eventually serving as the ANC's chief representative in Cuba, where he died in 1985. His five novels – including A Walk in the Night (1962), The Stone Country (1967) and In the Fog of the Season's End (1972) – are regarded as essential documents of the apartheid era.

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