TOUCH MY BLOOD, the early years

196pp., paperback, Reprint, Cape Town (2006) 2020

"Fred Khumalo captures an era in South African history that is not celebrated enough. This is a colourful book which makes you cry, laugh and just shake your head at the self-deprecating humour with which Khumalo tells his life story. The viciousness of the time - the blood, the pain and the tragedy - is related with literary finesse and with non-preachy sensitivity. The cultural pulse of the period is captured with elegance. With Touch My Blood Khumalo does for the '80s what the Drum writers and Sophiatown romantics did for the ''50s." Mondli Makhanya, Editor-In-Chief, City Press

Fred Khumalo is the author of the novels The Longest March, Dancing the Death Drill (winner of a Humanities and Social Sciences Award), Bitches' Brew (joint winner of a European Union Literary Award) and Seven Steps to Heaven; the collections of short stories Talk of the Town (winner of the 2020 Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award) and A Coat of Many Colours, and the memoir Touch My Blood (shortlisted for the 2007 Alan Paton Prize). He is the recipient of a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University. He lives in Johannesburg.