HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS

217pp., illus., paperback, Karavan Press, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9781049215105

A memoir by South African musician, journalist, filmmaker and author Roger Lucey, in which he describes building a house in the mountains of the Breede River Valley as a way of healing the darkness of his past and reclaiming his creativity.

"A lyrical, poignant, reflective and redemptive journey through Lucey’s colour-splattered and fully lived life of achievements and failures, anchored by a rough-hewn, hand-built home in the mountains – his private shield against the chaos that has often followed him." Steven Boykey Sidley

"Roger writes with the same wholehearted passion and zest with which he’s lived his extraordinary life. He crafts this memoir the same way he built his house in the mountains, step-by-fascinating-step. A moving and inspiring story told by an ace troubadour." John Maytham

Roger Lucey was born in 1954 in Durban. His first album, The Road Is Much Longer (1979), was banned for possession and distribution. His lyrics were considered a threat to the apartheid state and his career as a musician was destroyed by the Security Branch of the South African Police. He went on to work as a TV journalist covering wars in Africa and Eastern Europe, eventually leaving the news industry to join Theatre for Africa, an environmental theatre company. He later became editor and presenter of an e.TV nightly arts/news programme for which he received the Arts and Culture Trust Award. Lucey holds an MA from Duke University’s Graduate School of Liberal Studies. His autobiography, Back in from the Anger, was published in 2012. In 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the South African Music Awards.