Familiarity is the kingdom of the lost

'That confidence trickster gave me an idea. An idea that could be made to work. All it needed was guts and brains. And I think I had them both.' So wrote Dugmore Boetie, recreating his lost days of Johannesburg's Sophiatown, and most of the rest of South Africa, improvizing his smitten life of thievery and apartheid woes.

Dugmore is a one-legged, unemployed ex-convict with an incriminating passbook.

Savagely funny, he was a rackety, resilient, fantastic scam-artist all the way.