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The Electronic Elephant
1st edn 1st printing signed and inscribed by author on front free endpaper. 8vo. Original gilt lettered red cloth (bumped on bottom edge of upper board, edges spotted), dustwrapper (rumpled at head of spine - otherwise VG in protective cover, not price clipped). Pp. vi + 373, illus with b&w map (no other inscriptions).
- GenresTravelNonfictionAfrica
Paperback
Published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Dan Jacobson
81 books7 followersDan Jacobson (born March 7, 1929 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a novelist, short story writer, critic and essayist. He has lived in Great Britain for most of his adult life, and for many years held a professorship in the English Department at University College London. He has also spent periods as a visiting writer or a guest-professor at universities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa, and has given lectures and readings in many other countries.
His early novels, including The Trap, his first published novel, focus on South African themes. His later works have been various in kind: they include works of fantasy and fictional treatments of historical episodes, as well as memoirs, critical essays, and travel books. Among the awards and prizes he has received are the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1959 (A Long Way from London and Other Stories); Somerset Maugham Award 1964 (Time of Arrival and Other Essays); The Jewish Chronicle Award 1977 (The Confessions of Josef Baisz); the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography 1986 (Time and Time Again). In the year 2000 he edited and translated from the Dutch Een mond vol Glas by Henk van Woerden, an imaginative re-creation of the circumstances leading to the assassination of a South African president, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the country's House of Assembly.
Dan Jacobson has received an Honorary D. Litt. from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and on retirement from his position at University College London was elected a Fellow of the college. Collections of his papers can be found at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austen, Texas; Oxford University, England; and, in South Africa, at Witwatersrand University Library, Johannesburg, the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, and the Africana Museum, Kimberley.
His early novels, including The Trap, his first published novel, focus on South African themes. His later works have been various in kind: they include works of fantasy and fictional treatments of historical episodes, as well as memoirs, critical essays, and travel books. Among the awards and prizes he has received are the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1959 (A Long Way from London and Other Stories); Somerset Maugham Award 1964 (Time of Arrival and Other Essays); The Jewish Chronicle Award 1977 (The Confessions of Josef Baisz); the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography 1986 (Time and Time Again). In the year 2000 he edited and translated from the Dutch Een mond vol Glas by Henk van Woerden, an imaginative re-creation of the circumstances leading to the assassination of a South African president, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the country's House of Assembly.
Dan Jacobson has received an Honorary D. Litt. from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and on retirement from his position at University College London was elected a Fellow of the college. Collections of his papers can be found at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austen, Texas; Oxford University, England; and, in South Africa, at Witwatersrand University Library, Johannesburg, the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, and the Africana Museum, Kimberley.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 12, 2022
Here is an interesting exploration of a path known variously as the ‘hunter’s trail’ or ‘trader’s trail’, part of the ‘Cape to Cairo’ route up the spine of the African continent that leads through the marginal lands at the eastern edge of the Kalahari into the richer areas of southern central Africa: parts of what are now known as the Republic of South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. It describes a journey taken in 1992, during the final days of the apartheid government of South Africa, by the author, a South African brought up in Kimberley (in northern Cape Province) who became a prolific novelist and a professor of English in London.
Jacobson examines, perceptively, the history, politics and sociology of the region, describing the activities of many of the key characters involved, including Cecil Rhodes, Robert Moffat and David Livingstone. Much of the book, however, concerns the condition and attitudes of the people and places that he encountered on his travels, partly in comparison to the experiences, when younger, of himself and his wife (brought up in what became Zimbabwe). Inescapably, he has much to say about the various racial and cultural groups that live in the region, their history and past and present relationships. Here he writes with the insight of someone brought up as a South African, but who, as a (self-described) secular Jew, belongs to one of the smallest minority cultural groups and so has always been something of an outsider relative to most people that he encounters. I write this as the author would have done, I hope, as an observation with no judgement implied. Indeed, this is a strength of this book ¬— Jacobson is good at describing what was, and what is, as he finds it; for the most part, he leaves judgement to others.
This is not an optimistic or encouraging book, as everywhere he looks he finds overpopulation, misuse of resources, poverty and decline. It is a well-observed and well-informed account of an interesting but little known part of the world during a time of political transition.
However much research the author has done, though, I can see that there is always more to do. A few gaps in local knowledge of local events become apparent in his chapters on time spent in Botswana (where I lived for much of the 1980s, leaving about 4 years before Jacobsen visited). He includes accounts of several mildly antagonistic encounters with minor officials or policemen, whose actions might be construed as potentially incompetent or corrupt, but in any case as minor abuses of power. He concedes, in a footnote, that these incidents may have reflected reactions to the SA licence plates on his car. I think that this is very likely. Given that during the 1980s Botswana was subjected to a series of overnight assassination raids by SA special forces attacking actual or perceived elements hostile to the apartheid government in South Africa, it is understandable that lone South African travellers became objects of suspicion. If I, as a white expatriate, had encountered a wandering white South African, I would have been suspicious. Indeed, Jacobson describes one of the road blocks that were set up as direct response to these raids. I passed through many of these road blocks and sometimes, while birdwatching in open country, was rather brusquely interviewed by a Botswana Defence Force patrol. If you kept calm, treated your interlocutors with respect and explained yourself, then invariably all was well, I found.
Jacobson examines, perceptively, the history, politics and sociology of the region, describing the activities of many of the key characters involved, including Cecil Rhodes, Robert Moffat and David Livingstone. Much of the book, however, concerns the condition and attitudes of the people and places that he encountered on his travels, partly in comparison to the experiences, when younger, of himself and his wife (brought up in what became Zimbabwe). Inescapably, he has much to say about the various racial and cultural groups that live in the region, their history and past and present relationships. Here he writes with the insight of someone brought up as a South African, but who, as a (self-described) secular Jew, belongs to one of the smallest minority cultural groups and so has always been something of an outsider relative to most people that he encounters. I write this as the author would have done, I hope, as an observation with no judgement implied. Indeed, this is a strength of this book ¬— Jacobson is good at describing what was, and what is, as he finds it; for the most part, he leaves judgement to others.
This is not an optimistic or encouraging book, as everywhere he looks he finds overpopulation, misuse of resources, poverty and decline. It is a well-observed and well-informed account of an interesting but little known part of the world during a time of political transition.
However much research the author has done, though, I can see that there is always more to do. A few gaps in local knowledge of local events become apparent in his chapters on time spent in Botswana (where I lived for much of the 1980s, leaving about 4 years before Jacobsen visited). He includes accounts of several mildly antagonistic encounters with minor officials or policemen, whose actions might be construed as potentially incompetent or corrupt, but in any case as minor abuses of power. He concedes, in a footnote, that these incidents may have reflected reactions to the SA licence plates on his car. I think that this is very likely. Given that during the 1980s Botswana was subjected to a series of overnight assassination raids by SA special forces attacking actual or perceived elements hostile to the apartheid government in South Africa, it is understandable that lone South African travellers became objects of suspicion. If I, as a white expatriate, had encountered a wandering white South African, I would have been suspicious. Indeed, Jacobson describes one of the road blocks that were set up as direct response to these raids. I passed through many of these road blocks and sometimes, while birdwatching in open country, was rather brusquely interviewed by a Botswana Defence Force patrol. If you kept calm, treated your interlocutors with respect and explained yourself, then invariably all was well, I found.
August 15, 2009
You can go home again ... sort of. Caucasian (Jewish) author, born and raised in South Africa (who left to become a professor in England), does a great job here of seeing the modern-day region from a "native" perspective. Recommended.
For another view of the country by an younger emigrant (also Jewish), try
Are We There Yet? by David Smiedt.
For another view of the country by an younger emigrant (also Jewish), try
Are We There Yet? by David Smiedt.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews