In this colorful and moving second novel, Matthee returns to the
late-19th-century South African landscape of Circles in a Forest
(1984), but this time with a simpler, stronger story and a
wonderful sense of pace and scale. "Fiela's child" is Benjamin
Komoetie, 12 years old at the time of the first South African
census in the Long Kloof badlands above the fishing town of Knysna.
The Africaans census takers find Benjamin - a white boy, origins
unknown - living among blacks, and remove him; a backward, white
forest-family comes to Knysna to claim him as their missing son,
lost in the forest on the Long Kloof's southern ridge nine years
before. None of the heroic efforts of Fiela Komoetie, who knows
that Benjamin is not the forest family's missing boy, can save
Benjamin from a fate based on a mistake; he is destined to live and
work as Lukas Van Rooyen, among forest people who are backward,
silent and cruel, until he is a man and can find his way back home.
This he does years later, now with a man's urgent sense of purpose:
having fallen in love with Nina Van Rooyen, his wild, wood-nymph of
a "sister," Lukas/Benjamin must find out who he really is before it
is too late. The characters in this novel live and breathe; and the
landscape is so brightly painted that the trees, birds, elephants
and rivers of old South Africa are characters themselves. A book
not to miss. (Kirkus Reviews)
A small child is lost in an African forest. He is found by and cared for by a family he comes to regard and love as his own, becoming Fiela's child. The fact that she is black and he is white is irrelevant - until the bureaucrats and the law get to work.;This volume is part of the "New Longman Literature" series of modern and classic novels, short stories and plays. Each book in the series provides the complete, original text; a section by or about the writer; and a study programme and guidance on keeping a reading log.
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