Flyleaf fortuity: The threads of joy and learning that run through books

In a tattered copy of Flaubert’s letters, discovered in Doron Locketz’s bookshop, are the humorous scribbled exchanges between South African poet Lionel Abrahams and Vivienne Miller. Shared banter that tells how books can preserve a brief human encounter that transcends the digital age.

Hamilton Wende is a South African writer and journalist who has worked on a number of television projects and films for National Geographic, CNN, BBC, ZDF & ARD, among others. He has published nine books based on his travels as a war correspondent in Africa and the Middle East, and two children’s books. His latest thriller, Red Air, reflects his experiences with the US Marines in Afghanistan.

Can one ever have enough books? My father never thought so. My mother couldn’t wait to clear the bookshelves in her house after he passed away. I follow my father and his precious memory in this matter. I have a very packed library – mostly of secondhand paperbacks. Books that I can afford to buy, and crucially, books that I cannot wait to read. As a writer, my library is an essential part of my craft. I come back to books that I have had on my shelf for 20 years, or even longer. I flip through the pages to find the exact wording of a barely remembered phrase or idea. I sometimes google of course, but there is deep value in turning the pages. The old sentences and paragraphs coming alive again in memory, showing you things you never expected to rediscover.

Recently I went through a Flaubert phase – as one does. He was certainly eccentric and sometimes even misogynistic, but his prose is captivating and his insights into human character often take us beyond his 19th century male limitations. It was with this in mind that I set out to look for a collection of his letters to help me understand him, his insights and his books better. I came across one at one of my favourite shops: Bookdealers. The owner, Doron Locketz, is an old friend whom I met at his first shop on Rockey Street in Yeoville, back in the early 1990s. Doron had the only copy of Flaubert’s letters that I could find in Joburg.

“It’s from Lionel Abrahams’s library,” he told me. He couldn’t quite remember exactly how he had come to possess the precious book, but he thought it had come from the library of Jane Fox, Lionel’s wife. She is a well-known writer and cultural figure who wrote Letters to Lionel, a deeply moving tribute to him after his death in 2004.

Its provenance was special indeed. Lionel was a well-known South African writer and highly regarded poet. Author of The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan, The White Life of Felix Greenspan and five collections of poetry, he was a giant of South African culture when real meaningful literature was scarce in this country. Writing from the true heart, and standing for the moral value of literature against apartheid was hard, even dangerous. The threat of the security police and of imprisonment for your words that the regime might not like, was ever present.

Lionel engaged courageously with the South Africa of his time, refusing to submit to the white racism that was so common, and accepted, then.