Black Hamlet by Wulf Sachs

A Jewish physician psychiatrist, Wulf Sachs first met the man he calls “John Cavafambira” in a Johannesburg slum. The year was 1933, and Sachs wanted to learn whether psychoanalysis was applicable across different cultures. John as he is called throughout was a Manyika healer -deviner eager to learn the methods of European medicine. For the next two years, Sachs psychoanalyzed John by means of association. The result is Black Hamlett , a narrative, even novelistic, reconstruction of one black South African’s life set against the background of two worlds in a collision.