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.

19.5 x 13.5cm | 38 pages | 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.