Peter Bayer

Peter Bayer is an author, poet, cartoonist, journalist and academic. He worked for the Rand Daily Mail as reporter and sub-editor. After the Mail’s closure in 1985, he published educational newspapers for rural southern African before entering academia. He has just completed two children’s books, Tiny Tiger Toes and Grampa Grumblingspoon’s Proper Hectic Zoo. A former Visiting Associate in the Wits Journalism and Media Studies department, he holds a Masters in Creative Writing (2013), awarded cum laude. The Last Mentsch (Sun Dragon, 2014) was written in fulfilment of this degree. The novel, set in southern Africa from 1862 to 1985, tells the tale of South Africa’s embryonic Jewish community. Peppered with eccentric characters, it combines adventure, mystery, humour, madness, and tragedy. Shortlisted for the 2013 European Literary Award, judges wrote that it “gallops us into a fast-paced roller coaster of immigrant survival.” Wits English Professor Michael Titlestad hailed its “rich, poignant and often hilarious celebration of sto¬ry-telling” that “combines the historical novel and the picaresque to create a portrait of South Africa’s fledgling Jewish community.”