Van der Post's books are about the spirit inside our flesh, about its power to see, its powers to hear, its incredible power to endure and triumph. The man's life reads like a fable: born the 13th and last child of a Boer farming family, he grew up as much in the myths of Africa as in those of Western civilizaiton, and he knew, as only a child can, with the their freedom to come and go and eavedrop on adults, of the hidden world of the many (and utterly different one from another) black people of Africa.
Most tellingingly, he had a Bushman nanny, of that small and persecuted race, who triumphed in the barreness of the Kalahari, existing as if at a banquet, for whom telepathy was a commonplace, as they lived in the world of the inner voice. From that childhood, he passed into manhood and became a friend of Jung, who foresaw WWII and dreaded it. Therein, VdP, leading a rearguard commando (which the Boers invented) to delay the Japanese in their conquest of the Dutch East Indies, he was captured and spent the whole of the war in Hell on earth, a Japanese POW concentration camp, where he was further schooled in the travails and triumphs of the spirit.
There are (a few) people in the West who can be both of the modern world and a shaman of the spirit: VdP is one.
I was introduced to his writing as a teenager by my mother. She had been paralyzed by polio when I was a year old and was a tower of courage and spirit in a nearly immobile body. VdP's books were a talisman for her, and a new book was a source of rejoicing. I envy all of you who are reading them for the first time. One of VdP's characters in this book says, "Those who look before they leap, don't". Leap for these books.
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