Читать книгу A Just Defiance - Peter Harris - Страница 5

This is a story that has never left me. It has visited and haunted me from the very days on which the events took place. My challenge was to write it, a task that took me, intermittently, about ten years. It is now finished and I have many to thank for their support and assistance. Ivan Vladislavic for his faith in the book and for his advice and assistance over the last five years. Stephen Johnson, the MD of Random House, for taking the time to read my manuscript in November 2007, and for liking it. To Annari van der Merwe and Frederik de Jager of Umuzi for bearing with their first-time author.

My thanks particularly to Mike Nicol who sacrificed his entire December 2007 and early January to undertake an outstanding edit of the manuscript in an utterly professional manner. I must acknowledge Jacques Pauw’s books In The Heart of the Whore and Dances with Devils, which were a valuable source of information.

My gratitude goes to Helen Seady for her input on the text, and Norman Manoim for advice on some of the long-forgotten legal issues.

Finally, to Caroline who has been a constant source of support and provided invaluable advice in relation to all of the many drafts of the book over the last ten years, drafts which she painstakingly read and on which she provided meticulous comment. She has been central to the writing of this book and, with my beloved children Simon, Isabella, Dominic and Luke is, of course, central to me.

P H

April 2008