Buried in the sky

Set both in the present and in the dust-laden reaches of Angola in 1976, Buried in the sky is an album of stories about men and women and war. To the strains of the music of Bob Dylan and in long periods of boredom and inactivity, South Africa's soldiers tried to make sense of a war they could not see. The author, himself a conscript at that time, allows his comrades to tell their stories. We get to know Manie Dippenaar, whose hunting trip threatened to turn into an international incident; Private Smith, the boy from the Bluff who had love and hate tattooed on his knuckles and chose a novel way to roast a chicken as his means of revenge on a bad tempered major; Morphine Sister, who handled a gun like a mamba; and Spek, the surfer-boy who dreamed only of catching the next big wave.