Description
NEW FROM ENVELOPEBOOKS
A powerful novel about innocent faith and an abuse of trust.
Torn from his parents as a child, Stephen Mzamane is picked by the Anglican church to train at the Missionary College in Canterbury and then sent back to southern Africa’s Cape Colony to be a preacher.
He is a brilliant success, but troubles stalk him: his unresolved relationship with his family and people, the condescension of church leaders towards their own native pastors in the 1870s, and That Woman—seen once in a photograph and never forgotten. And now he has to find his mother and take her a message that will break her heart.
In this raw and compelling story, Marguerite Poland employs her massive experience as a writer and African linguist to recreate the polarised, duplicitous world of Victorian colonialism and its betrayal of the very people that it claimed to be enlightening.
Marguerite Poland
Marguerite Poland (born 1950 in Johannesburg and brought up in the Eastern Cape) is a celebrated South African writer of books for adults and children. She studied Social Anthropology and Xhosa, took a master’s in Zulu literature and folktales, and was awarded a doctorate for her study of the cattle of the Zulus. Two of her books won South Africa’s Percy FitzPatrick Award. The Train to Doringbult was short listed for the CNA Awards. Shades has been a matriculation set text for over ten years. The Keeper received the 2015 Nielsen Booksellers’ Choice Award as the title South African booksellers most enjoyed reading, selling and promoting the previous year. Translated into several languages but still largely unknown in the UK, the author won South Africa’s highest civic award in 2016 for her contribution to the field of indigenous languages, literature and anthropology.
Metadata
Publisher: EnvelopeBooks
Extent: 428 pages
Size: 203mm x 127mm (8.0” x 5.0”)
ISBN: 9781838172039
Contact: editor@envelopebooks.co.uk
Reviews
“An emotional rollercoaster-the astonishing love story of a man for a church, an ideal and a woman. Heart-wrenching.”
John Mbangyeno
“Poland is a worthy descendant of Olive Schreiner in her heritage and passions.”
Mark Gevisser, novelist and critic
“Marguerite Poland, as always, is able to use words to paint reality. She has written an incredibly moving and compassionate yet piercing historical account which both demands apologies for the sins of the past yet is also redemptive.” Reverend Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town
Reverend Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town
“I love the book and admire its courage, to say nothing of its skilfulness. The subject is painful. Reading the manuscript, I was driven to tears more times than I care to remember. I couldn’t stop thinking: if this is what priests thought, why do we wonder Apartheid happened? It is horrifying but also humbling to see how, with the best intentions, we err and betray the very values we preach. Marguerite Poland is to be commended for writing such a revelatory account of societal attitudes. The book is fiction but is based on church history and bigotry parading as decency. This is a painful and humbling reminder that none of us is above erroneous judgment.”
Dr Sindiwe Magona, writer
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