A Good-Looking Corpse: World of Drum - Jazz and Gangsters, Hope and Defiance in the Townships of South Africa

by Mike Nicol

This book recounts the 1950s in South Africa - a decade of optimism and hope that ended, tragically, with the massacre at Sharpeville - as seen through the microcosm of "Drum", a magazine produced in Johannesburg for black readers. The "Drum" writers - Henry Nxumalo, Can Themba, Bloke Modisane, Todd Matshikiza, Casey Motisi - lived by the precept "live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse". These black writers on "Drum" - who were later joined by Lewis Nkosi and Nat Nakasa - were responsible for a range of investigative journalism, the best of which is reproduced here, alongside tributes from friends and colleagues including Anthony Sampson, Nadine Gordimer, Trevor Huddleston and Walter Sisulu.

Genres: Nonfiction, South Africa, Africa

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Born in Cape Town, Mike Nicol was educated there and in Johannesburg, where he began his working life as a journalist. During the 1980s he moved back to Cape Town and worked on the magazine Leadership for a number of years. Towards the end of that decade he published his first novel, The Powers That Be, resigned from the magazine and began what he calls "the scary life of a freelance journalist and writer."

Reviews

[Dingaan · Rating 3 out of 5]

a well written book which gives a reader a glimpse of what it was like in south africa in the early apartheid years...interesting book!

[Sergio GRANDE · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for anyone interested in that period in the life of South Africa. It mixes anecdotes and stories from Drum magazines with ribald journalists, gangsters, horny musicians, talented artists, liberal Whites and scurrilous policemen. It's full of humour and tragedy.