Out of Line by Dov Fedler

Out of Line is both Dov Fedler’s autobiography and a book that captures a particular history of a specific generation, that of the Jewish baby boomers in South Africa who descended from mainly Lithuanian stock.

Dov was a laatlammetjie born and bred in Johannesburg in 1940, just as Hitler was getting into his stride. His mother’s sister and her husband and their two children were trapped somewhere in Eastern Europe and exterminated before 1945.

A third child was not on his parents’ ‘want-list’. It was hard enough supporting two much older children and a printing business that was struggling to exist. Dov’s mother had a ‘nervous breakdown’ when he was about three and this is when he remembers seeing his first pencil and knowing precisely what it was that he wanted to do with his life.

There are no coincidences in Dov’s life. There is a hand of destiny that he believes has steered him. This memoir recounts the many dramatic encounters that have shaped Dov – death and cancer, humour and love, family and friends, work and leisure, and all told with the most wonderful turn of phrase.

print edition e.book