Comrade Baby

The latest book of typings by PE’s greatest export after Graeme Pollock, Athol Fugard, John Kani, the Opel Corsa, Jeremy Maggs, the Shatterprufe windscreen, Siya Kolisi and the Finkelstiens. And after Danie Gerber if you count Despatch. And Evolver One. And Garth Wright if you count Uitenhage. And Derek Alberts. And Melissa from Idols.”It’s like Justice Malala being married to Joe Slovo, except one of us is a white liberal”

Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren’t Black, The Colour of One, and other learnings on the path from white privilege to the Benoni taxi rank. Hagen Engler gains perspective on blackness, whiteness, drunkness, punkness, the Eastern Cape, Robot Guys and the resilience of his cushion-sized liver, as South Africa evolves from a gnomes’s lair to a proper country with equal rights and opportunities for all-time cock-ups, poetry, depravity and hedonistic benders like you’ve never seen.

A book of columns for Sunday Times, Mahala, Weekend Post, That’s How It Is and elsewhere, mixed in with poems, rhymes and lyrics brought on by Comrade Baby and the South African condition.

For a sample of what’s inside, check here and here, or even here.

The book is Hagen Engler’s sixth. It is, always an independent Pocket Assegai Publication and a document of a decade of South African-ness. It makes a sweet gift for any South Africans in touche with their own ridiculousness and who aren’t afraid of a little bit of swearing.

“A compelling pastiche of South African craziness that somehow, magically, passes as a survival guide to travel, multiracial dating and other South African adventures” – The Daily Maverick

“Hagen Engler is one of South Africa’s most under-recognised great writers. Obervant, witty, sacriligeous, and highly original… ” – True Love

Buy Comrade Baby!