Desmond Meiring
Filed under: Authors
Desmond Rice, pen-name Meiring as his mother was Huguenot. Kenya-born. Spent two years young in Jerusalem where his father was a top man in the British Palestine Police. School at Cheltenham, UK. Wrote matriculation aged 16 at Dunkirk, so his mother rescued him to South Africa. At 17 he joined the Kenya Police, then at 18 the 6th South African Armoured Division with the British 8th then American 5th Armies. At Cassino, then spinally wounded at Bologna and four months hospitalized. There he studied Italian diligently enough to interpret when cured between the Allied and the very competent Italian Partisans from Milan up. Post war read a BA at Cape Town then Modern Grates at Oxford. A journalist in South Africa, then Shell International, working there, in Israel, Tanganyika, Laos, Thailand, Venezuela. He was then made top dog of a clutch of Shell companies in Central America, for exploration, production, refining, tankers and marketing, then the same for Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. He found Europe dead dull after that and was retired early after 25 years. He then worked 3 years as a sales director at the Kuwaiti Oil Ministry, then studied Arabic full time for 3 years at the American University in Cairo. He is happily married to Soozi, and they've lived 18 years on the Cote d'Azur in France, and now bask in Cape Town's sun. He has 12 books published in the USA, UK, Argentina and South Africa, some 10 being novels, under his Desmond Meiring pen-name, as are his 15 published short stories.
Winning Entry: Rosebush and Why He Chuckled
Contest Won: Tom Howard/John H. Reid Short Story Contest 2008, Most Highly Commended
