The Heart of the Furnace

New York: Appleton-Century, 1937. First American Edition. Octavo (21cm). Blue cloth boards, lettered in red on spine and front cover; dustjacket; 298pp. Fine, tight copy in original, unclipped dustwrapper, lightly, evenly soiled, still Near Fine. Odd and uncommon working-class novel, concerning a murder and a love triangle involving two blind basket-weavers. The setting is Cape Town; the author was an Australian-born South African. There were American and British editions but no South African edition that we can find; the American edition precedes the British by a year. Not widely held in institutions, and scarce in nice condition.