Africana Books
Art in Cape Town

Please search or browse our inventory of hard to find, out of print, used, and rare books. If you can't find what you like please fill out our off-line search form and we will search our off-line inventory, other bookstores and book search services for you. Africana Books has been trading internationally for over twenty years and we offer and buy good quality antiquarian books on South Africa and the rest of the continent, published from several hundred years ago until the present, on a variety of subjects, as listed on the right hand side. We issue catalogues of our latest acquisitions, and/or specialist subjects every few months for local and overseas clients, which you can receive per E-mail, if desired. We keep a WANTS database, and welcome any request and will do our best to find uncommon items of Africana. If required, further photos illustrating condition of covers, dw's/dj's are available for most books and any further queries regarding condition, or within reason, content, will be answered with pleasure per E-mail. Some are old acquaintances, but re-read after years or decades, some are seen in the light of the passing seasons and current events and even some of my travels are described. Some contributions will be on practical aspects of book-collecting, maintenance and even DIY publishing. Contributions were sometimes written for the Society of Bibliophiles in Cape Town, or other publications. The more detail you provide, the more likely we will find the book you want. Just so we understand each other, 'hunting' does not figure in my vocabulary as equating to a bunch or braying jackasses in red coats, mounted on half a ton of horseflesh apiece and accompanied by a pack of yowling curs, who chase a small carnivore hardly larger than the pet cat, across field and hedgerow with bloodthirsty intent. No, hunting involves a man, a noble beast and a gun. Call it 'bringing home the bacon' or something a little more high-brow, like 'satisfying the primeval instincts', the fact remains that no hunter can explain his addiction to a non-hunter satisfactorily. He then converts some few hundred kilos of more or less aggressive beast into a series of lunches for his tribe, and he can hang some of the inedible bits on a tree outside his hut (or a wall inside if he is so minded) while he brags to all and sundry about his prowess. Better than saying checkmate; or putting down the completed Sunday Telegraph Crossword? Many of the modern hunters are passionate about the great outdoors, the wild beasts that roam the veld; they want to preserve them for their children and grandchildren to enjoy in the future. The omnipresent District Officer in the African colonies, or 'DO' as he was generally known, was another class of hunter that wrote some thumping good yarns. For a part of each year they would be tasked with patrolling their remote region, accompanied by sufficient bearers to sustain life in the wilds, but which also meant shooting a considerable number of heads of game for the pot, as well as despatching any problem animals that plagued the populace. This brings me out of Africa, to one of the most respected hunter/naturalists who had to be judge and executioner in the conflict between man and beast on many occasions. Jim Corbett the slayer of the maneaters of Kumaon, the Temple Tiger and the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag, among a host of problem cats, was no ordinary hunter, who killed for trophies or glory. His role was as the last resort between a defenceless cowering population of rural Indians, and the few rogue cats that caused panic and disrupted all life in the hill villages. Possibly it has to do with the attitude to the hunt and the animal. For the Brits it's a noble animal they're pitting their wits against, and a sport (of kings, mind you, not so long ago) which carries a certain aura of romance. For the Afrikaner, the animal is historically so much biltong, and the hunt is a way of bringing home the biltong.