An extraordinary journey through our unknown histories - Alex Stone book launch in Hilton

Dreams and Dust is a new history of South Africa, covering the 58 short-lived republics that have existed here since 1795 – plus an additional equally-fascinating 20 fictional ones (Bapetikosweti, Fook, Wakanda and others.) The book is 629 pages and includes many arresting images and 69 seldom-seen historical maps.

 

The author, Alex Stone (Top image), has spent half his life in South Africa before moving to Waiheke Island in New Zealand. For his creative writing, Stone has either won, been runner-up or short-listed in nine New Zealand literary awards, and one international award for memoir.

 

“I can’t think of anything remotely comparable to this in South African historico-literary works – in subject conception and in its approach to subject matter, it really is a unique volume, fresh and strikingly idiosyncratic in its handling of subject matter.

 

Bill Nasson, Emeritus Professor of History, Stellenbosch University, writes:
“Alex Stone is a highly accomplished writer, with a prose fluency, an eye for freakish detail and an ability to compress things which mark him out as a gifted stylist. His Dreams and Dust introduction tells you what to expect, makes what that is look tantalising, and reels you in. This is imaginative historical writing with a light and lively touch, while not dodging topics that are emotive and powerful.”

 

Also launching at The Knoll in Hilton on 15 August is Taken, due out in July this year from UK-based Vanguard Press, is a unique novel written in the first-person voices of three Indian elephants. Their stories are relayed by an African elephant living in a retirement home for circus performers in contemporary Kentucky, USA.

 

Taken is the debut novel of Alex Stone, who spent half his life in South Africa before moving to Waiheke Island in New Zealand. For his creative writing Stone has either won, been runner-up or short-listed in nine New Zealand literary awards, and one international award for memoir (see full credits below).

 

Taken was completed under a mentorship scheme of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Stone worked with Elizabeth Smither, novelist and former Poet Laureate of New Zealand.

Smither says that “Philosophical discourse is one of the charms of Taken. Philosophising is almost made for elephants, being part of their characters, a strategy for survival in difficult situations. Alex is the master of this, the supreme mahout.

 

“I couldn’t help smiling to myself at the clever ending. Not in ‘closure’, as we think of it – but in the opening out into a broad and accommodating philosophy which gathers all the threads together.”

 

Smither says of Stone’s short stories: “He is a writer of striking originality with qualities of daring and humour that are rare. Like Lloyd Jones, Alex has the ability to create a landscape so vivid the reader feels he is walking down a dusty road or in the hold of a ship.”

 

Lloyd Jones, author of Mr Pip and Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Award, added: “There is energy and confidence on every page. The way you inhabit your lines is remarkable.”

 

Gareth Patterson, author of The Secret Elephants, said of Taken: “Absorbing and lyrical, and poignant in the elephants’ message. Like Heathcote Williams’ Sacred Elephant before it, Taken deserves a wide readership.”

 

Stone says he has written this book mostly to build a fictional world where the animals’ voices are pre-eminent. And so, hopefully, to afford us humans some humility.

 

“Wildlife across the globe is at a dangerous tipping-point. Even elephants – and especially the often- overlooked Indian elephants – are endangered in the wild.

 

“The eons-old relationship between elephants and humans can be a powerful vector to carry the story of inter-species communication and mutual respect, which will lead to a better world for all our futures. The voices of these magnificent animals need to be heard, as ambassadors for all wild animals.”

 

Each of the main elephant characters has an especially close relationship with a singular human.

 

For Biligiri, in Abyssinia in 1868, that person is a larger-than-life New Zealander Captain Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy, aka Basha Felika, a real historical figure. Biligiri calls him “a gale of a man.” Apart from English, Te Reo and Elephant, Speedy is also fluent in Amharic. This is why he is guiding the expeditionary force into the highlands of Abyssinia, to rescue hostages held by the mad temperamental Emperor Tewodros II.

 

Tant-Meisie, who is touring South Africa with the Boswell-Wilkie Circus meets significant personalities from 1960’s South Africa – and a past-midnight family of secretive Knysna elephants while camped outside the town there.

 

Unusually for a novel, Taken includes a bibliography of important and intriguing additional reading – on elephants, the human-animal relationship, and the psychic and emotional lives of animals.

 

 

From Tessa Duder CNZM OBE, author of the Alex quartet, winner of the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal: “I was greatly impressed by ‘Taken’; an accomplished and poignant story. 

Here is a writer of considerable potential, should he decide to write longer fiction.”

 

From Bruce Ansley, author of A long Slow Affair of the Heart, A Fabled Land, and Coast: A New Zealand Journey, winner Best Illustrated Non-fiction Book at the New Zealand Post Book Awards: “It is intriguing, beautifully crafted, moving and poetic. It brings the knowing eye of elephants to bear on the reader, creating the feeling of injustice I always have when I’m close to them. It’s a parable of imperialism. For all these reasons and more, I loved it.”

From Stephen Stratford, NZ literary editor: “The elephants’ voice works very well. This is hard to pull off but you did a great job of the African voice.”

Taken will be available in bookshops from July 2023.

 

Supplied.