As a novelist, poet, and critic, but especially as a short-story writer, Herman Charles Bosman holds a unique place in the field of South African literature in English. He ranks in stature alongside Olive Schreiner, Pauline Smith, Alan Paton, and Nadine Gordimer, and yet, unlike these writers, he is little known outside the country of his birth. An explanation for this obscurity can be found in the fact that, with one or two minor exceptions, his books have never been published outside South Africa. Add to this his almost obsessive concern with his own country and its inhabitants and it is perhaps clear why, despite Roy Campbell's description of him (on a South African Broadcasting Corporation radio program in April 1954) as "the best short-story writer that ever came out of South Africa," Bosman was never destined to make as big an impact on an overseas market.

The appearance...