Todd Matshikiza, who died in 1968, wrote the music for that marvellous African jazz opera
King Kong, which proved such a runaway success in South Africa and abroad in the early 1960s.
Of Chocolates for My Wife first published in 1961 (and 'banned' in South Africa until July 1982), Matshikiza said, "This is a book about real people, many of them my friends, and about a few of the experiences I have shared with them."
It tells in his own wry, vivacious, coruscating style of black life in the Johannesburg of Orlando, Sophiatown and Alexandra Township when King Kong was in rehearsal - and, in sharp contrast to this, of the adventures of the Matshikiza family in London.
