A Mouthful Of Glass

(Paperback)

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A short, tough, unforgettable story of an assassin - the man who killed Hendrick Verwoerd, the racist prime minister of South Africa, in 1966. The killer was a man lost between the races, maddened by not knowing who or what he was. Born in Mozambique of a Greek father and African mother, Demitrios Tsafendas thought he was white until his father abandoned him. He then discovered he was 'coloured'. He spent twenty-five years wandering the world looking for a home, growing stranger and more desperate. In 1965 he arrived in South Africa and got a job as a messenger in the Parliament building - a job reserved for whites. He bought a knife . . .

Reviews

A tough, unforgettable portrait of Demetrios Tsafendas, the assassin who killed Prime Minister Verwoerd of South Africa in 1966, a killer lost between the races, maddened by not knowing who or what he was. A brilliant account of the madness of apartheid.

Author Bio

Henk van Woerden was a painter and the author of four novels, including A Mouthful of Glass. He spent his childhood in South Africa. Recently living in Amsterdam, he became highly regarded in the Netherlands, were he died in 2005. Dan Jacobson, who grew up in Kimberly, South Africa, is the author of many distinguished works of fiction, including The Rape of Tamar and The God-Fearer. His most recent book, Heshel's Kingdom, was published in 1998.