La Guma, Alex

Mother worked in a tobacco factory. She was the daughter of a colored servant in the parliament building of the Cape Colony (Javanese) and a carpenter - an immigrant from Scotland. Because of his political and social activities, his father was rarely at home, and Alex was raised by his mother’s grandmother, who, according to her grandson, was like “colored Queen Victoria”. However, the father’s ideas influenced his son; a portrait of V. I. Lenin hung in the house, which is described in the story “Portrait in the Living Room,” which was repeatedly published in Russian.

At seven, he went to Trafalgar School (described in the novel “At the End of the Mist Season”). He was fond of books by Alexander Dumas father, Walter Scott, Fenimore Cooper, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle. The South African writer gave one of his heroes a fascination with the novel The White Squad. Maxim Gorky had a great influence on him. “For me, a person living in a country like South Africa, where we are faced with all the worst manifestations of racism, economic exploitation, social inequality, deepest hopelessness and cruelty, Gorky’s ideas were a ray of light that scattered the dense darkness of an exploiting society” (from articles by Alex La Gouma "What I learned from Gorky").

In 1945 he graduated from a vocational school and began working at a factory for the production of metal boxes, but was fired from there for participating in the strike. In 1947 he joined the League of Young Communists, in 1948 - into the Communist Party of South Africa . He published his first story in 1957. In 1960, he became one of the editors of the anti-racist magazine New Age .

Like his father, he was one of the leaders of the Congress of Colored People of South Africa, repeatedly subjected to harassment and arrest by the authorities for the struggle against apartheid ; his works were banned for publication. In 1966, due to a life threat, he was forced to leave South Africa and spent the rest of his life in exile: until 1979 he lived with his family in London, spent the last years in Cuba, where he acted as a representative of the African National Congress. He visited the Soviet Union, was familiar with Anatoly Safronov, Maxim Tank, Anuar Alimzhanov. In 1969 he received the Lotus Prize in the field of literature. In 1973 he was elected Deputy Secretary General of the Association of Writers of Asia and Africa .

Died of a heart attack .

Alex La Guma is a character in the movie of the Moroccan director Ben Barca Amoc

His creative heritage includes stories and tales, the most famous of which is the work “Wandering in the Night” (1962, Russian translation - 1964), dedicated to the life of people of the social “bottom” who are trying to break out of the world of oppression and racism. It is also translated into Polish, Hungarian. The story "Stone Country" is also very popular. It was published in the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Brazil. In 1970, translated into Russian by Irina Gavrilova Gurova.

• Wandering in the night. And a thread twisted three times. Stone country. At the end of the fog season. A story. M .: Progress, 1975
• Travel to the Soviet Union // In the Soviet Union. Issue 1. M .: Progress, 1979, pp. 13-138
• Wandering in the night. M .: Rainbow, 1984
• Favorites. M .: True, 1985

• Arthur Meyman
• Alan Payton

• La Guma Alex // Kuna - Lomami. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1973. - (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. Ed. A. M. Prokhorov ; 1969-1978, vol. 14).

• Biography
• An article in Encyclopedia Britannica.