TOM EATON Livres

To the North the railways have rusted away, and rumours of war rumble on. But in the South, on the beautiful island of Cape Formosa, the days still pass in heat and wind and silence.

It came upon a midnight dreary...In fact it couldn't have come at a worse time. And when it did come, it wasn't through a burning bush or out of a thundercloud. Instead it blew up his toilet and ruined the tiles on his bathroom wall. On the wrong side of the right side of thirty, barely tolerated at work, his calls to Rhonda unanswered for a fortnight, George wasn't in the mood for visitors when the Angel of the Eleventh Hour appeared. In fact George wasn't in the mood for a lot of things that happened after that. But what George wanted and what the Angel Madadoel wanted were two very different things; and when the Intelligence of the Intelligency of the Moon says Jump, and has a penchant for murdering people who disagree with him ('correction through incineration'), you ask How high? And so begins a tale of an unwilling prophet with faith in almost nothing, and a celestial messenger capable of almost anything.

The triumphs; the heartbreak; the controversies; the heroes and the villains - South Africa's sporting history is one of drama and greatness. Often it has been a drama acted out on a huge international stage. But wherever South Africans have played, there has always been one spectator for whom it was more important than a game: the sports writer.