FADING FOOTPRINTS, in search of South Africa's first people

298pp., illus., maps, paperback, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9781776194230

José Manuel de Prada-Samper on his study of the folklore of the /xam hunter-gatherers of the Upper Karoo, and the extent of the genocide of the /xam San by European colonisers.

"Beautifully written, highly accessible and refreshingly honest and direct, this distillation of a forty-year research journey makes a truly unique contribution to the enormously rich literatures on the Bleek-Lloyd collection , colonial history and /xam history and story-telling traditions." Professor Paul Bank, University of the Western Cape

"Seeking the history of a vanished culture, folklorist José Manuel de Prada-Samper found a lost people hiding in plain sight by the stories they told." Don Pinnock, author of Gang Town

Spanish folklorist José Manuel de Prada-Samper has travelled to South Africa repeatedly since 2005 to study the culture and history of the Upper Karoo, both in the field and in the archives. A research associate at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town his books include The Man Who Cursed the Wind, and other stories from the Karoo and, in collaboration with other scholars, On the Trail of Qing and Orpen. Adam and the Water Maiden, a collection of traditional stories from the Cederberg and surrounding areas, was published in 2021. He lives in Barcelona.