Match makers: A case for South African sport

by Tracy Gilpin

250 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1999

About the author

Tracy Gilpin was born in Cape Town, South Africa, a country rife with material for crime writers and a recent past of state-sanctioned violence and personal daring in which truth really was stranger than fiction.

Tracy says, “I have sat in a comfy chair while a man, who a few years before had served jail time as a terrorist, poured tea for me in his parliamentary office. I’ve met a young mother who was a gunrunner, middle-aged couples and newlyweds who ran underground cells from home and plotted sabotage around the kitchen table. One woman looked like everyone’s favourite granny but broke the law regularly and never once caved in under interrogation or in solitary confinement. She also managed to raise several successful, well-adjusted children in the process. Of course I had to write about some of it.”

Her formal training was in journalism and she has worked mainly in communications. She is the author of a non-fiction book, three novels and dozens of works of short fiction published internationally.