Herman Charles Bosman has acquired the mythic status of Charles Dickens and like Charles Dickens, thousands of people not only greatly admire his work, but also claim to find him funny.

Okay, compared to other great South African literary names such as Olive Schriener, Andre Brink and JM Coetzee, Bosman stories are a positive laff-riot.

I picked up his work for the first time ever having heard wonderful reports of him far and wide: I didn't expect to be entranced, but I did expect to be mildly amused. No such luck. Bosman stories are, for the most part, really sad and depressing. And, as a non-Protestant English-speaker from the Cape, I simply found nothing to which I could relate in either his characters or his landscape.

I visited Groot Marico this year, scene of so many tales, and after a mampoer tasting, attended an excellent Bosman reading - a sequence of events I highly recommend. The tedium of the stories, the hot afternoon and the copious volumes of mampoer induced a pleasant drowsiness and I was able to drift off and doze - the most enjoyable way in which to experience HCB. ( )