The Author

Rayda Jacobs

Rayda Jacobs Biographical Information
Rayda Jacobs was born in Diep River, Cape Town on March 6, 1947. She started writing at a young age and sent her first story to Springbok Radio at the age of 12.

In 1968 she immigrated to Toronto, Canada, where she lived for 27 years. She kept on writing and in 1994 her collection of short stories, The Middle Children, was published. In 1995 she returned to South Africa and published her first novel, Eyes of the Sky, in 1996. It won the Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English fiction. In 1998 her second novel, The Slave Book, was published, followed by Sachs Street. These three books can be regarded as a trilogy, but also function independently. The full list of titles written by her appears below:

Prose
 
· 1994 The Middle Children, published by Second Story Press

· 1996 Eyes of the Sky, published by Kwela. The book was translated into German in 1999.
   German title: Augen des Himmels.

· 1998 The Slave Book, published by Kwela

· 2001 Sachs Street, published by Kwela

· 2003 Confessions of a Gambler, published by Kwela

· 2004 Postcards from South Africa, published by Juta

· 2005 The Mecca Diaries, published by Juta

· 2006 My Father's Orchid, published by Umuzi

Autobiography
2008 Masquerade, published by Umuzi

Awards
Herman Charles Bosman Prize (1997) – Eyes of the Sky
Herman Charles Bosman Prize (2004) – Confessions of a Gambler
Sunday Times Prize for English Fiction (2004) – Confessions of a Gambler

Rayda Jacob’s blogspot
http://raydajacobs.blogspot.com/2011/09/confessions-of-gambler-news.html