When the novel was first published, MOST critics were full of praise! 'Fairly waltzes the reader along...the mixture of the mundane and the fantastic is deceptively artless, the prose full of energy and humour and beneath the playfulness there is an undertow of pain...a thought-provoking and entertaining debut.' - Hilary Mantel, Daily Telegraph. 'Funny, bright and painfully sad...' Helen Shaw, Irish Times. 'Immensely appealing...Umfaan's Heroes is a winner from cover to cover from an author with an abundance of talent.' Evelyn Holzhausen Cape Times. 'Excellent...is this Tom Sharpe territory? No, but there are many rich ironies reminiscent of Sharpe's good, if bitter sweet scenes of farce.... a fine, realistic novel.' Margaret Forster Sunday Times. Only the snob at Publisher's Weekly was sniffy. So I wonder why that was the review Amazon chose to use? A richly funny and painful story Umfaan's Heroes is a fantasy and a political novel in spite of itself, with a seasoning of Science Fiction with a unique insight into living under the insane madness of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Lovers of Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Sharpe, Ursula Le Guin and Franz Kafka will enjoy this book. Aware of his incarnations in past lives, Tom Bloch, 18-year-old army conscript - South African, white, Jewish - in a prison cell, is condemned to death for terrorism. The novel relates Tom's journey to his cell, how he was befriended by a witch-doctor claiming to be a harvester (of bodies!) from another planet, via his fist fight with his father, his friendship with an Afrikaner boy, experiments with drugs to this gloomy place with the hangman's noose dangling outside. Just as well that Tom has always regarded life as an interlude between deaths for he soon becomes dangerously involved with the Mandela-like figure of Absolom. And madness, death and insane comedy is the only winner....
About the Author: Jon Elkon was born and brought up in Apartheid South Africa. His parents were committed in a bourgeois way, to the struggle against Apartheid. His father Sam was a member of the Industrial Council, as well as being a self-made mattress millionaire and worked for the recognition of black trade unions. Mother Valerie, as a member of the Black Sash women's movement, protested against the injustices of the system by standing mutely in public places in a black sash, symbolising the death of democracy. The family lived in the constant fear (paranoia) of being watched, of the telephone being tapped, of persecution one can expect in a police state. Probably their fear was quite unjustified - neither Pa Elkon nor Ma Elkon ever posed a major threat to the system. Bridge and golf were much more important to them than political injustice anyway. Which stung the idealistic young Jon who didn't make his views secret. He was the victim of a swarm of rugger buggers at this boys' school, who saw him as an effeminate 'Kaffir lover" and made his life hell. At 16, he left King Edward VII School for a cram college in the centre of Johannesburg. Here he found his self-confidence, and met regularly with a group of like-minded adolescents with the joint project of undermining Apartheid and returning the country to sanity... At 20 he escaped. Arriving in the UK penniless and homeless, he spent time on the streets, sleeping in shop doorways and parks. He was eventually rescued by luck and the kindness of friends. These adventures and many others are the basis for his three novels, Umfaan's Heroes, Laszlo's Millions and Celine, the first two of which were published almost twenty years after the events they lie about. It took many years before he felt confident enough to submit a novel for publication. His first novel, was published by Andre Deutsch and received very well by the critics. The sequel sank into the Great Ocean into which second novels disappear. Umfaan's Heroes has now been re-issued by the Author in a new paperback edition which will be sold worldwide and will hopefully gain a new readership. And the exciting news is that the sequel has been fully remastered and rewritten - Elkon asserts it will "Redefine the comic novel" and will "rewrite London" - and will be released soon. Jon Elkon now teaches in an inner city school in London, writes occasionally prizewinning poetry and more novels (the Fifth Estate is now available on Kindle. Beta version.)