Book of Josh Author:Derek Thomas Derek Thomas is a writer who draws on his own life's experiences around which he weaves a story. The loss of his eldest son through conscription by the apartheid government into the bush war in Angola was a profound spiritual experience and is probably the inspiration for this book. The author's time is spent between two places, Cape Town city ... more »and in a small Karoo town in the wide open hinterland of his home country, South Africa. Descriptions of the places referred to in the story come with firsthand knowledge. This story is an allegorical tale about Josh, the central character, a white pacifist drawn into activism during the sixties and seventies in South Africa and Namibia. His engagement with the struggle is depicted in episodes which characterised a time of campus activism, the communist insurgents, people's organisations, assassinations, being on the run, and clashes with security police in the townships. He does not escape the long arm of the law and finall pays the ultimate price. It is a familiar story which has no beginning and no end, a repetitive tale of good and evil that affects all of us. With the minor variations of each individual's destiny, our providential fate is prescribed by the one and only fundamental Truth, and that is embodied in a divine charter over which we hold no brief. The narrative has strong symbolic and spiritual associations, enacted in the socially oppressed environment of the time, without being political.« less