Silf - MR Graham John Bursey

SILF is an acronym for "Sweet Innocent Little Farmboy," the author's alter-ego. SILF: Book 1 is the story of a mischievous white child who grew up in a dysfunctional family on his parents' tobacco farm in southern Africa in the early 1950s and 1960s in British colonial Southern Rhodesia. His story is one of growing up as a little bwana with his shamwari, Dickson and other farm Africans, and attending boarding school in the early 1960s. The book deals with the first twelve years of Silf's life. His anecdotes are reminiscent of the "SPUD" series of schoolboy antics, combined with a touch of Bryce-Courtney's "Power of One." Silf's story is one of parental neglect and unwilling parenthood. He experiences a tempestuous relationship with his father and struggles for approval, recognition and affirmation by his father. Silf and his sister Foofa become unwilling sacrifices on the altar of their mother's political dreams, which she uses to escape from her humdrum existence as a farmer's wife and a mother. The children come to the painful realisation that that they are unwanted, and that their parents are flawed creatures made of clay. They are effectively raised by an aunt and Nanna, their grandmother.