the african man's oeuvre

I dreamt that I spied some 1960s African novels that I had left in the rain, and I went into a schtick about 'you know how you've always got a pile of African novels you leave out in the rain somewhere...?' these were detective novels by a writer whose first name was Malcolm, they were a uniform series with colour covers that simulated, to my mind, stained glass. I started to read one, having noticed them consciously for the first time, and they became my new favourite thing.