Author Ebrahim Essa launches book that is part memoir, part satire
The memoir tackles questions of identity and belonging of a first generation South African Indian living in Durban at the beginning of apartheid.
DURBAN-BASED writer Ebrahim Essa launched his book EB Koybie: A memoir of shenanigans between Durban and Bombay at Ikes Books and Collectables on 5 February.
The memoir tackles questions of identity and belonging from the vantage point of a first generation South African Indian living in Durban at the beginning of apartheid and in Bombay shortly after India’s independence.
Essa is a comic-book and Hindi film aficionado. He taught high school Physical Science for 30 years before retiring in 2016. He is a widely published letter writer to various newspapers across South Africa, the author of The Life Story of Suliman Essa Patel and was also a contributor to the anthology Undressing Durban. EB Koybie is his first book.
In this part memoir and part satire, Essa chronicles a quirky childhood growing up in the 1950s in an Indian township on the outskirts of the South African port city of Durban.
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He bunks school to watch Hindi films, irons his brothers clothes to access banned imported comic books and tries to outrun gangsters in the Grey Street Casbah. However, what make’s Essa’s stories about childhood so jarring is that he was growing up as a young boy during apartheid.
Just as he begins to feel like he’s winning at life, apartheid education prompts his father to send him to India to study. He spends 21 days on board the SS Karanja nervously snacking on Lemon Creams before reaching Bombay. But studying in India isn’t all that it’s made out to be. It’s worse. He battles jaundice, long-drop toilets and electricity cuts during the ‘65 India-Pakistan war, and India is a whole other world for him.
Essa tickles and pokes even as he documents a fascinating period in the South African Indian community.
The book is available at R150 direct from Ike’s Books and Collectables in Florida Road, and Adams Bookstore in Durban, as well as on Amazon Kindle and as a soft cover on Amazon.
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