Athol Fugard’s only novel Tsotsi is a powerful and turbulent story set in the 1950s about Tsotsi, a Sophiatown gangster, who stalks the streets leaving pain and terror in his wake. Derelict and deprived, he treats life as it has always treated him, until a chance encounter brings about a strange redemption. This is the only novel thus far by South Africa’s foremost playwright. It is a white man’s vision of a black ghetto, seen with nightmare clarity and insight.

Born in Middleburg, Cape Province in 1932, Fugard has written for the theatre and acted in over a dozen of his own plays. His works are performed widely throughout the English-speaking world and have been translated into several languages.