A larger than life figure
Red Dog Historical Adventure Hayden Horner:
Author: Willem Anker Released by: Kwela Books Year: 2018 Pages: 427 ISBN: 9781534308718
Giants once walked in southern Africa, but less than 200 years later their trails have gone cold, with just sketchy hints of their existence sprinkled across our history books.
Until award-winning author Willem Anker’s literary incantations raised one of these gargantuan spirits and gave him free reign over his pen. Red Dog is the part fact, part fiction incredible journey of Coenraad de Buys, the most dangerous man in the Cape in the 1700s.
He moved east to become an advisor to the Xhosa king, before bedding the king’s mother. An impressive figure of nearly 2.1m with enormous self-confidence and an insatiable sex drive (allegedly fathering 315 children across the region) he was the proud king of bastards, vagabond, smuggler, pillager and the bane of governments.
Published in Afrikaans, as Buys in 2014, the book has been masterfully translated for English readers.