A Good-looking Corpse - The World of "Drum" - Jazz and Gangsters, Hope and Defiance in the Townships of South Africa (Paperback, New ed)

The 1950s in South Africa were a time of optimism that was abruptly halted by the Sharpeville Massacre. This is an account of those years as seen through the microcosm of "Drum", an illustrated magazine produced in Johannesburg for Blacks. Although owned and edited by Whites, it employed a group of black writers who lived by the precept, "Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse". They surveyed the world of the townships, exposed the realities of apartheid, and charted the growing resistance movement. The book reproduces the journalism and recalls the struggles, triumphs and tragedies of those who participated.