It is 1782, and the 729-ton Grosvenor has run aground on the coast of Pondoland. So begins James Whyle’s second novel, Walk (Jacana), so t...

This interface of white people and the Xhosa seems to be Whyle’s current and enduring fascination, and he renders it pared down to the ess...

In other hands these encounters between Europe and Africa would be lousy with meaning and allegory and retrospective wisdom, but there are...

Exclusive Books, Rosebank He passed the village where the bullock had been slaughtered and went on and walked throughout the night.

He could smell the smoky mushroom smell of the bowl and the sharp clean tang of the soured milk. 

His progress was slow because of the swelling of his legs. 

Cowie River Mouth A little way upstream he found a place where pure water flowed. 

He ate the shellfish he had brought. They had no taste, no smell. 

The fire was dead.

There were the marks of a beast upon the sand.

Fish River Sun Country Club , 2013. The men were painted with red clay and armed with lances and shields. They examined the castaways ...

It started at Lambasi in northern Pondoland and it ended not far from what we now know as Port Elizabeth. It is a hike that every South...

Kobonqaba River They saw a group of elephants, grey beasts which rolled and frolicked and pirouetted massively in the mud and dipped t...

Already the sand was building up against his form and the boy, his apprentice these four years, carefully drank the water in the shells he ...

At dawn they rose and built up the fire and prepared to walk but Mr Shaw was not able to stand. He lay on the sand and his skin was draped ...

The dawn came...   The dawn came and with it a slanting rain and mist and they proceeded and they halted at low tide for shellfish. Th...

View the coastline at Nqabara in Google Earth 3D

Dwesa Wildlife Reserve The castaways stood in awe and the monster stepped forward and flapped its grey ears and lifted up its head. It...

...a strange procession in the roar of the surf, pilgrims, perhaps, who had journeyed to the land of the dead and returned much reduced, ea...

They awoke shivering in mist and drizzle and moved the fire to a more sheltered spot and built it up and chose their brands and then they p...

The Wild Coast . They took up their brands and walked on... 

George Carter, a jobbing writer and painter, met Irishman John Hynes on a passage to India and learnt the story of the wreck and the w...