DURBAN'S CASBAH, bunny chows, Bolsheviks and bioscopes

429pp., illus., map, paperback, Pietermaritzburg, 2023

 

Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, who spent their childhoods in and around Durban’s Grey Street, on the history of the area referred to by residents as 'the Casbah'.

 

"The pages of this book breathe magical life into apartheid's grisly geography, knocking on doors, dancing on rooftops and doggedly pursuing retreating shadows into the arcades of wonder. A story about place that will take you around the world and bring you back home." Betty Govinden, author of Sister Outsiders: Representation of identity and difference in selected writings by South African Indian women

 

"While the narrative of this book presents the broad socio-political conditions contextualising the period, it also speaks to the senses of sound, smell and taste of the neighbourhood." Len Rosenberg, author of The Buildings of the Durban System: The architecture of social control

Ashwin Desai is Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Goolam Vahed is Professor in the Department of History, University of KwaZulu-Natal.