Usikota Pseud (1 results)

First edition, especially uncommon in the jacket, of this spoof of the Nazi regime, "one of the oddest products of interwar travel literature" (Koshar, p. 115). The book presents supposed despatches sent by a Zulu reporter for the "Zulu Post" as he toured through Hamburg, Nuremberg, Munster, Berlin, and Munich. The book plays on the tropes of Western travel literature documenting European visits to tribal societies, as the narrator comments and moralizes on the mysterious and barbaric ways of the Germans. His travels culminate in meetings with Goering, Goebbels, and Hitler. At the end, he mysteriously vanishes after a visit from the stormtroopers, and the editor adds a postscript wondering if he was roasted and eaten by the natives. Rudy Koshar, German Travel Cultures, 2000. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in black. With dust jacket. Contemporary Christmas gift inscription to front free endpaper, ownership stamp of recipient to front pastedown, contemporary Cape Town bookseller's ticket to rear pastedown. Slight sunning and bumping at extremities, contents foxed; unclipped jacket with slight chipping at extremities, inked "Usikota" to spine panel, light sunning and rubbing, without repair: a very good copy in very good jacket.