Word: karroo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...short novel and, on the surface, tells simply the story of two white university students who are hitchhiking to Cape Town on their summer vacation. Their road leads through the Karroo, a desert plateau of Cape Province. Beside a dry river at the sun-blistered dorp of Mirredal, they put up for the night in a ruined boarding house. It is full of grotesque and expensive furniture; they are the only lodgers, and its sole occupants are a man, his wife and, of course, the usual African servants...
Windbag Who Babbles. There is something odd about the man, Fletcher, a windbag who babbles about irrigating the Karroo with atomic power and establishing a world government on the lines of South Africa's present Nationalist regime. The man's wife is silent and bitter. But the pair beg the students to stay with them for a free holiday. Thus the boys come to sense the fear that lies under Fletcher's racial brag. The house is subtly menaced by a big old illiterate Kaffir, Joseph, who just hangs about. Man and wife are desperately afraid...