ADAM KETHRO’S DEBUT NOVEL, PLEASURES OF THE HARBOUR, TRAVERSES THE HIGH SEAS AND LOW ROADS OF SOUTHERN AFRICA.

From the pen of the renowned and respected South African logistics expert and businessman, Adam Kethro, comes a highly entertaining novel, PLEASURES OF THE HARBOUR. Kethro debuts impressively with this dramatized biography, which tells the story of a young man’s fortitude to achieve his life goals.

It is part adventure and part action, with lots of wheeling and dealing and readers are in for a rollicking ride as he traverses the high seas and low roads of Southern Africa while opening boardroom doors and a few bedroom doors along the way.

With the title of the book drawn from the Phil Ochs album, he draws the reader into a world of ambition, greed, sabotage, bribery, corruption and revenge.

Set in the closing decades of the 20^th century in sanction-wracked South Africa. It navigates a world of dodgy business partners, dubious deals and a few failed attempts at love for Adam Askew, before he can finally say he’s made it.

Adam Askew is a young man in a hurry and always wanted to be financially independent. Armed with guts, determination and a cocky self-assurance, he sets up a shipping company with a view to take on the world, one ton of cargo at a time.

Fed up with the cliquey set-up in Durban, he takes a gutsy gamble − the biggest risk of his life − one that will ultimately make or break him. He heads for the big city lights of swanky 80’s Joburg and is soon wining and dining at the top of the Carlton, sipping the best champagne in London and making some enemies along the way.

PLEASURES OF THE HARBOUR is published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, and it is due for release on 1 September 2022.

It will be available in all good bookstores and online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Kethro was born in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, in 1956. He attended St. Helena Primary School and matriculated from Durban Boys High School in 1973 but rewrote matric at Damelin College in 1974. Following his military conscription, Adam was offered a job in logistics through a family connection.

With no formal post-school business qualifications, he started his own freight company in 1980. Kethro spent 25 years building, running and growing his company, Bridge Shipping, and today it is the biggest logistics company in Southern Africa.

Under Adam’s leadership and direction, it grew into one of Southern Africa’s leading logistics companies, boasting more than 750 employees when he retired as executive chairman in 2005. At the time, he left behind 45 millionaires, many of whom still work at the company.

He currently lives in Cape Town with his wife and although now semi-retired, he owns and is actively involved in four diverse enterprises, including a bridging finance company, a computer firm, a cargo salvage business, and a horse pre-training farm in the Natal Midlands.

This evergreen entrepreneur aspires to spend half of his time exploring the world and pursuing his various hobbies, which include collecting music, art, books and war memorabilia.

Adam’s motto – we are each responsible for the quality of our own lives – are words he has lived by his entire life.

Olka Bolka did an interview with Adam:

When did you decide it is time to write your first book?

At the ripe old age of 61

Tell us a bit about the planning of your first novel.

I wanted to write from an early age but decided to try and make money first. Then at 61, I wasn’t a writer but I had become the role I played, a businessman. All about writing, a mentoring company for aspirant writers helped me along the way.

What was the feeling of finishing your first novel?

At first very exciting for a few hours until I refocused on the next leg of the journey.

Have you been reading since childhood?

I suppose I was a bit of a lonely child, so to escape into a book was my constant joy.

What book genre would you love to explore?

I want to stick with the novel. It gives you the space to say everything.

What type of books do you read?

My father forced me to do art at school instead of history. He said you can always read history later in life. He was right. I love reading history. And I was a very poor artist.

Is there a book/poem that you read that made a big impression on you?

Brutus’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar where he say’s

“There is a tide in the affairs of men…”

Tell us about yourself in a nutshell.

It’s too late to find out now, but I suspect I may suffer from a mild form of attention deficit disorder. Didn’t exist when I was a boy. I think life is an accumulation of experiences, good and bad, and the more you have the richer you are.

Tell us something no one knows about you.

I am a legend in my own lunchtime.

What inspires you?

To create and to love.

If you could chat with anyone over a cup of coffee, who would it be and why?

Van Morrison. I love his music.

What is on your bucket list?

To travel to the towns and villages outside of the cities I went to as a businessman.

Are you planning a few more books?

Pleasures of The Harbour is one part of a Trilogy.

What will you advise people who would like to become a full-time writer?

Keep your day job until you are established.