INDABA MY CHILDREN (Limited Collectors’ Edition, Inscribed by Author)

Johannesburg: Blue Crane Books, 1964

Small 4to, xix + 562pp. Half leather hardcover binding, gilt lettering to spine, and gilt tooling to boards. Full-colour frontispiece, portrait of author, and various illustrations/vignettes.

Limited collectors’ edition of 1212 copies, of which this is no. 259. Inscribed by author. With loosely inserted materials including newspaper clipping of article on author, and extract from author’s book ‘My People’.

Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (1921 – 2020) was a Zulu sangoma (traditional healer) from South Africa. He was known as an author of books that draw upon African mythology, traditional Zulu folklore, extraterrestrial encounters and his own personal encounters. His last work was a graphic novel called the Tree of Life Trilogy based on his writings of his most famous book, Indaba my Children. In 2018 he was honoured with an USIBA award presented by the South African Department of Arts and Culture, for his work in indigenous wisdom. Credo was a sanusi (common spelling isanuse) which is a type of Zulu diviner or sangoma. The term stems from a more historic time and is not widely used today, even in a traditional setting. Credo lived with his wife Virginia in Kuruman, Northern Cape, where they ran a hospice clinic. (wikipedia.com)

Condition: Good-very good. Light rubbing and a few minor stains to boards. Light rubbing and creases to spine. Slight bumps to corners of boards. Small stains to fore and top edges of textblock, especially severe towards bottom of fore edge. Small spots of offsetting on verso of front endpaper from author’s inscription on facing page. Slight stain to limitation page. Text is clean. Well bound.