WRITING THE ANCESTRAL RIVER, a biography of the Kowie

193pp., map, b/w & colour illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2018.

"Jacklyn Cock has penned a love letter that is as hopeful as it is elegiac. Drawing on family connections to the Kowie River that go back to the 1820 settlers, Cock asks big questions about the relationship between nature and culture, between humans and other forms of life, and about the place of rivers in human history. It is only by rethinking our relationship to nature that we can save ourselves." Jacob Dlamini, Assistant Professor of History, Princeton University

"Jacklyn Cock has made the story of a small and fairly insignificant river into a metonym of the biological glories of South Africa and the ecological devastation they have endured, and continue to endure. The result is at once lyrical and trenchant. As a history rooted in the landscape of South Africa, it has few peers, and no superiors." Robert Ross, Professor Emeritus of African Studies, Leiden University

Jacklyn Cock is Professor Emeritus in the Sociology Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her other books include "Maids and Madams: a study of the politics of exploitation" and "The War Against Ourselves, nature, power and justice".