After Dr Trevor Guzmán had packed his meagre belongings into the boot of his dark blue Ford Capri he bid farewell to Potchefstroom. On the road to Johannesburg he picked up a hitchhiker. Little did he know that his life was going to change in the most unimaginable way.Three Days in Phoenix seems to be on the surface a simple fictional narrative. It embodies a number of themes which have intrinsic poetic value. It involves a journey in which the destination changes, it involve identity formation and identity plasticity in which the possibility of identity transformation reaches the realm of the unanticipated. It deals with the mystery of religion and the magic of religion and it deals with religious conversion and the probabilities and uncertainties associated with conversion. But it also deals with the work of contingency in shaping lives in unexpected and unanticipated ways. It invites us to entertain possibilities which are life changing and liberating . It states that we are free or we can find meaningful kinds of real freedom in our unfreedom. Three Days in Phoenix, like Jonah in the belly of the fish, Phoenix transformed Trevor into a new person. Three Days in Phoenix is an unforgettable experience in the world of Magic Realism. As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.
