{"title":"Chris Cocks","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover the books of \u003cstrong\u003eChris Cocks\u003c\/strong\u003e, all in one place. Bestsellers in our range include \u003cem\u003eDeslocado Redemption\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eAlone in the House\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eA Colonial Boy\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrowse every Chris Cocks book we stock below, with delivery across South Africa.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"9780958489096","title":"Fireforce","description":"The horror of guerrilla warfare in Africa Fireforce is the compelling, brutal but true account of Chris Cocks's service in 3 Commando, The Rhodesian Light Infantry, during Zimbabwe's bitter civil war of the '70s--a war that came to be known almost innocuously as 'the bush war'. 'Fireforce', a tactic of total airborne envelopment, was developed and perfected by the RLI, together with the Selous Scouts and the Rhodesian Air Force. Fireforce became the principal strike weapon of the beleaguered Rhodesian forces in their struggle against the overwhelming tide of the Communist-trained and -equipped ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas. The combat strain on a fighting soldier was almost unbelievable, for the Rhodesians, who were always desperately short of ground troops, were sometimes obliged to parachute the same men into action into as many as three enemy contacts a day. While estimates of enemy casualties vary, there seems little doubt that the RLI accounted for at least 12,000 ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas--but not without cost. Fireforce is not for the squeamish. Although it has been written with unforgettable pathos and humour, it tells of face-to-face combat in the bush and death at point-blank range. It is a book which does nothing to glorify or glamorize war, for as Chris Cocks found at such a young age, war is merely a catalogue of suffering, destruction and death. Fireforce has been described by critics as being to the Rhodesian War what All Quiet On The Western Front was to World War I and Dispatches was to Vietnam. Read it ... it will be an experience you never forget. Chris Cocks lives in Johannesburg. This is the fourth edition of Fireforce. He is a partner in the South African Publishing house, 30° South Publishers. Cocks is also the author of Out of Action and co-author of The Saints--The Rhodesian Light Infantry.","brand":"BOOKSITE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39413751611507,"sku":"9780958489096","price":242.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2291\/7991\/products\/fireforce-one-man-s-war-in-the-rhodesian-light-infantry-chris-cocks-28478837096563.jpg?v=1637412131"},{"product_id":"9781991240088","title":"Alone in the House","description":"In this posthumously published collection of poems, Michael Wessels' passionate love for and knowledge of the natural world shines through. The poems are about life's joyful and also painful journeys, whether physical or spiritual or emotional. The poems are about encounter. And discovery. They are testaments to a life lived to the full. A life filled with deep compassion and wisdom.\n\n \n\n Michael Wessels was Associate Professor of English at the University of the Western-Cape. His research explored new ways of reading San oral literature and the politics of indigeneity. He published more than thirty accredited articles and chapters in books in his career. He died tragically in 2018.","brand":"BOOKSITE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45358818492531,"sku":"9781991240088","price":190.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2291\/7991\/files\/26753043482896.jpg?v=1790093178"},{"product_id":"9781928211587","title":"Out of Action","description":"Out of Action is the reworked and updated edition of Survival Course, the sequel to the best-selling Fireforce--one man's war in the Rhodesian Light Infantry.\n \n Part 1, 'War', chronicles Chris Cocks's final 16 months of combat in the Rhodesian bush war, as a stick leader in PATU, the Police Ant-Terrorist Unit. It is a time of unbelievable cruelty as the part-time white reservists' battle overwhelming odds, without air support and ... without a future.\n \n Part 2, 'Peace', recounts the author's painful adjustment to life as a civilian--a fifteen-year odyssey in the embryonic state of Zimbabwe. It is an intensely personal journey in which the author pulls no punches as he describes his clumsy attempts to come to terms with a) the new dispensation of black Africa and b) himself. It is a cri de couer, the story of a young man, brutalized by war, who seeks escape in alcohol and drugs, and who, in the process, causes immeasurable pain and suffering to those around him. These too are the casualties of war.","brand":"BOOKSITE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45358890418291,"sku":"9781928211587","price":242.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2291\/7991\/files\/14355413482874.jpg?v=1788975821"},{"product_id":"9781791969387","title":"Deslocado Redemption","description":"Deslocado is Portuguese for ‘displaced’. This is a story of redemption set in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique in the mid-1990s, a time of nervous energy, opportunity and fear, in a region that has only recently emerged from bitter colonial wars of independence and subsequent civil wars. The peace is delicate and rancorous, racial attitudes coagulate and retribution is borne on the wind of change. \n\n \n\nMike, a white Zimbabwean in his mid-thirties, a former Rhodesian soldier who fought against Robert Mugabe’s guerrilla armies, is struggling to find his place in the world. His marriage is crumbling against a backdrop of PTSD, alcohol and self-recrimination. Phoebe, a black Zimbabwean, grew up in Mugabe’s guerilla camps of central Mozambique. Her mother, a guerrilla herself, was killed in a Rhodesian raid in 1977. Unbeknown to Phoebe, her father is Norman Mubvunduku, the Zimbabwean minister for state security who controls the sinister Central Intelligence Organization (CIO). Salim, a member of Frelimo, the Marxist party that holds power in Mozambique, manages the state-owned hotel in the central Mozambican port city of Beira, from where he runs the city’s prostitution ring. Norman Mubvunduku, on his many official, and unofficial, visits to Mozambique is counted among Salim’s most valued clients. Salim’s star performer is Phoebe whom he ‘rescued’ from the UNHCR camps in the mid-1980s. \n\n \n\nMike does business in Beira—where the disfigured street urchin, João, ‘adopts’ Mike as his patrão, his patron, guarding Mike’s pick-up truck being among his many self-appointed duties—a city that Mike visits more than is necessary to escape his atrophying marriage and the stifling racial attitudes of Zimbabwe. He meets Phoebe—emerging from a brutal sexual assault by one of Salim’s clients Norman Mubvunduku)—at a local club and they fall in love, just as a violent cyclone sweeps up the Mozambique Channel.\n\n \n\nAn irresistible train of events is set in motion: Phoebe walks out on Salim; Mike is fired from his job in Harare and leaves his marriage; Salim has João picked up and cruelly tortured in an effort to find out where Phoebe is; Mubvunduku sets his CIO onto Phoebe’s trail in an effort to establish her identity, at the same time inculpating Mike in her disappearance; and Mike and Phoebe flee to Lusaka, Zambia when it becomes clear that their lives are at stake. \n\n \n\nIn Beira, Mubvunduku and Salim are killed in a grenade explosion as João takes his revenge—with João presumed dead—which clears the way for Phoebe and Mike to return to Mozambique. UNHCR documents come to light, proving Phoebe’s father was Mubvunduku. It also emerges that Mike, as a soldier on the 1977 raid, witnessed Phoebe’s mother’s death and in fact ordered the troops not to shoot the girl. Phoebe remembers his voice. However, it is all too much for Phoebe to absorb and her final parting from Mike is acrimonious. But separation is transient: João, now an amputee, returns from the dead several months later to announce to Mike that he has been sent by Phoebe to find him and bring him back to her.","brand":"BOOKSITE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45359061172339,"sku":"9781791969387","price":333.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2291\/7991\/files\/51333482826.jpg?v=1790104498"},{"product_id":"9798872551850","title":"A Colonial Boy","description":"In the booming postwar colony of Southern Rhodesia la belle époque Rhodesienne ends abruptly when Prime Minister Ian Smith declares unilateral independence from Britain in 1965, but life in Midvale Road, on the outskirts of the capital, Salisbury, ticks on, and by, as it always has, and it is here, between 1957 and 1968, that the wind of change gusts up the lane, and through the boy. Told through expressive dialogue, with a cast of colourful and outrageous characters, A Colonial Boy tracks the formative years of a child who is a keen observer of life and takes us on a wonderful journey that is at once innocent and ugly, funny and tragic, but always honest.","brand":"BOOKSITE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45359061205107,"sku":"9798872551850","price":333.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2291\/7991\/files\/16186973488907.jpg?v=1790149773"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.readerswarehouse.co.za\/collections\/chris-cocks-books.oembed","provider":"Readers Warehouse","version":"1.0","type":"link"}