Going Back to Say Goodbye - A Boyhood on the Mine

In this novel Kenneth de Kok describes his childhood in Stilfontein, a small mining town in the Transvaal. Set in the 1950s, the story immerses the reader in a world of bicycle races down dirt roads, kleilat fights, childhood pacts and seaside holidays. It's a world of Post Toasties, chickenpox, pellet guns and catties - a universe populated by siblings and grown-ups, by Grandma and Grandpa. It's a memoir about fathers and sons and growing up.

Kenneth de Kok was born in Johannesburg in 1949 and grew up in Stilfontein, a gold-mining town in the Western Transvaal (now North West Province). He studied law and politics at the University of the Witwatersrand, lived in the UK and the Netherlands and moved to Canada in 1978. Kenneth is married to poet Carolyn Smart. They have three sons.