Ystervark Rivier: A Slice of Life

This delightful collection of humorous stories is set in the mythical village of Ystervarkrivier (Ace-Turf-Arc-Riff-Ear) - a forgotten outpost of the Drakeniqua Municipality, somewhere in South Africa. The village has a church, a bottle store and a golf course, but not necessarily in that order.The central motif is the nine-hole golf course built by a displaced Yorkshireman, Harry Corkaby. The stories detail Harry's attempts to understand South Africa in the post-apartheid years and to make money for his retirement by encouraging people to play on his folly. The action is contemporary, reflecting current events such as Tiger's divorce, Seve's death and Louis Oosthuizen's Open Championship, but the setting is timeless, a pastoral South Africa with little racial tension.The rural setting allows incursions by such oddities as a one-eyed ostrich, a troop of violent baboons, Nguni cattle being fattened up for lobola and the eponymous porcupine ("e;Ystervark"e; means Porcupine in Afrikaans).Meet the richest man in the area, Inkosi Dlamini, as well as the poorest, Thabiso 'Joseph' Tshabalala, Harry's employee, and the rest of the entertaining cast - Ambrose Papenfus (bookworm and proprietor of the bottle store), Jannie Venter (the local sheep farmer; as strong as an ox and almost half as nice smelling), Frikkie Venter (teenage son of Jannie; rather more in love with golf than with his girlfriend, Marietje de Bruyn), Beulah de Bruyn (sturdily built, middle-aged cattle farmer who keeps her daughter chaste), S'bu Dlamini (foppish heir to the separate fortunes of his divorced parents, Inkosi Dlamini and Edna Gqobo-Dlamini, Mayor of the Drakeniqua Municipality) and Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar Pietersen (soldiers of fortune, down on their luck and, most Saturday nights, down on their knees).This is farming country with a very small and spread out population, but the community comes together to pray and play golf.

This delightful collection of humorous stories is set in the mythical village of Ystervarkrivier (Ace-Turf-Arc-Riff-Ear) - a forgotten outpost of the Drakeniqua Municipality, somewhere in South Africa. The village has a church, a bottle store and a golf course, but not necessarily in that order.The central motif is the nine-hole golf course built by a displaced Yorkshireman, Harry Corkaby. The stories detail Harry's attempts to understand South Africa in the post-apartheid years and to make money for his retirement by encouraging people to play on his folly. The action is contemporary, reflecting current events such as Tiger's divorce, Seve's death and Louis Oosthuizen's Open Championship, but the setting is timeless, a pastoral South Africa with little racial tension.The rural setting allows incursions by such oddities as a one-eyed ostrich, a troop of violent baboons, Nguni cattle being fattened up for lobola and the eponymous porcupine ("e;Ystervark"e; means Porcupine in Afrikaans).Meet the richest man in the area, Inkosi Dlamini, as well as the poorest, Thabiso 'Joseph' Tshabalala, Harry's employee, and the rest of the entertaining cast - Ambrose Papenfus (bookworm and proprietor of the bottle store), Jannie Venter (the local sheep farmer; as strong as an ox and almost half as nice smelling), Frikkie Venter (teenage son of Jannie; rather more in love with golf than with his girlfriend, Marietje de Bruyn), Beulah de Bruyn (sturdily built, middle-aged cattle farmer who keeps her daughter chaste), S'bu Dlamini (foppish heir to the separate fortunes of his divorced parents, Inkosi Dlamini and Edna Gqobo-Dlamini, Mayor of the Drakeniqua Municipality) and Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar Pietersen (soldiers of fortune, down on their luck and, most Saturday nights, down on their knees).This is farming country with a very small and spread out population, but the community comes together to pray and play golf.