An extract:
“What’s it about? Sylvie Moulin. Who?
I’d never heard of Sylvie Moulin until I chanced upon an English translation of Distant Allegiances (1984) on a bargain table in Kalk Bay, near Cape Town. I parsed her introduction in the sceptical manner of a book buyer who not only reads but also writes.
'Dust, thirst, loneliness, waiting, fatigue – these are the writer’s obligations to knowing.'
Huh? I reread the statement, closed the book, and continued browsing. Who isn’t familiar with these obligations? Maybe not the dust, not as a persistent complication, but the rest of things – thirst, loneliness, waiting, fatigue – are pretty much standard contracts in any life. At length, after unsuccessfully trawling the bookshop’s familiar shelves, I returned to the marked-down copy of Distant Allegiances on the bargain table.
A year or two later I found myself in Mali chasing after Sylvie.”
A chapbook written by Sean O'Toole about a trip to Mali in 2007, Dust, thirst, loneliness, waiting, fatigue, life was produced by Dream Press in 2021.
“What’s it about? Sylvie Moulin. Who?
I’d never heard of Sylvie Moulin until I chanced upon an English translation of Distant Allegiances (1984) on a bargain table in Kalk Bay, near Cape Town. I parsed her introduction in the sceptical manner of a book buyer who not only reads but also writes.
'Dust, thirst, loneliness, waiting, fatigue – these are the writer’s obligations to knowing.'
Huh? I reread the statement, closed the book, and continued browsing. Who isn’t familiar with these obligations? Maybe not the dust, not as a persistent complication, but the rest of things – thirst, loneliness, waiting, fatigue – are pretty much standard contracts in any life. At length, after unsuccessfully trawling the bookshop’s familiar shelves, I returned to the marked-down copy of Distant Allegiances on the bargain table.
A year or two later I found myself in Mali chasing after Sylvie.”
A chapbook written by Sean O'Toole about a trip to Mali in 2007, Dust, thirst, loneliness, waiting, fatigue, life was produced by Dream Press in 2021.
231 x 166 x 35 mm | softcover
Sean O’Toole (b.1968) is a Cape Town-based journalist and writer. He is the former editor of Art South Africa, a quarterly print magazine focusing on contemporary South African and African art. He writes a weekly column on photography for the Sunday Times, and a biweekly art column for the Financial Mail.