Bosman
Sir: In his kind review of The Diamonds and the Necklace (11 February) David Wright takes me to task for saying that Bosman's books are not much liked by South Africa's English-speaking literati, by which I meant the liberal or left-wing people who read the Weekly Mail and the New Statesman.
Certainly Bosman is popular with the general reader, so that the mass circulation Johannesburg Star often has Bosman paro- dies on contemporary topics. Most of his books are available in the CNA-stores, the South African version of our W. H. Smith. During the months I was in South Africa, in 1986-87, 1 found only occasional Bos- man titles in the South African versions of Waterstone, Dillon's or Hatchard's. In the largest bookshop in Johannesburg, with shelves of books by the likes of Brink, Coetsee and Gordimer, they had nothing at all by Bosman.
My explanation is that South Africa's literati cannot accept a writer until he has been acclaimed in Britain and the United States. This applies as much to the Afri- kaners as to the English-speaking whites. At Stellenbosch, I went to the bookshop that sells set books for students of English literature at the famous Afrikaans universi- ty. These included many South African writers, all of excellent anti-apartheid credentials, but not Herman Bosman.
Incidentally, one of the set books for these Stellenbosch students was Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. If South African bookshops sell his Satanic Verses, they can expect a reaction more ferocious than that of Bradford or even Islamabad. Angry South African Muslims have rioted in the past over insults to their religion, and sometimes beaten up Jewish students at Durban and Johannesburg. A clash over The Satanic Verses would pose a delicate problem to the South African literati.
Richard West
London Wll
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