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What can readers expect from Santa Gamka?
I think and hope I’ve managed to tell a good story that will grip readers from
beginning to end. The story is told from a very precarious context, that is the inside
of a potter’s kiln. At the end comes a major turn, the story takes a totally new
direction which will interest and even shock readers.
That they’ll be able to get under his skin and have empathy with him as he steps
out into the great world, trying to figure out what love is through his relationships
with his seven clients.
I hope readers will be able to give their heart to Lucky Marais.
So Lucky Marais is a coloured guy. Why?
In this novel the story I tried to tell is about someone who grew up after 1994,
a person I call a post-apartheid baby.
Someone who has all the chances to do with his life what he wants.
But Lucky Marais is not stupid - he knows the opportunities won't be offered to him
on a silver platter. He has to get off his ***
and create these chances himself. That’s the type of guy he is.
He makes it his mission to establish himself as a self-assured young man,
a go-getter.
Where is Lucky from?
Lucky grew up very poor on a farm which didn’t belong to his family.
His parents are labourers.
He was born in a tiny house made of stone, mud and corrugated iron, two
two rooms only.
There is a certain tension between this humble place where he hails from …
he has intimate knowledge of the veld, the small bushes, the wild animals, he knows
how his father can imitate the call of a baboon exactly …
and yet he desparately wants to escape from all of this.
But the house of stone and mud with its few pieces of furniture and a tatty curtain
only to separate the parent’s sleeping quarters from the children’s
keeps on echoing throughout his life.
Even though he wants to get away from his poor beginnings it remains
an important part of his identity.