The History of Man
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced.
Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity.
But why has Emil’s life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it?
Prize-winning novelist Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu traces Emil’s life from boyhood to manhood – from his days at a privileged boarding school with the motto ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, to his falling in love with the ever-elusive Marion, whose free-spirited nature has dire consequences for his heart – all the while showing how Emil becomes a man apart.
Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility – told with empathy, generosity and a light touch – is an excursion into the interiority of the coloniser.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ndlovu impresses with a fresh and astute perspective on colonialism, race, and family that focuses on white South African-born civil servant Emil Coetzee, who appeared in the author's debut, The Theory of Flight. Ndlovu follows Emil's life chronologically from the short-lived bliss he felt while living among natives in a small village in the 1930s through a series of episodes in his childhood and adolescence marked by animated moments of camaraderie with boarding school classmates, family conflicts (his parents separate after his mother catches his father dressing as a woman), and the feeling of not belonging. In the 1950s, having moved to the City of Kings in his unnamed country in southern Africa, he founds the Organization of Domestic Affairs to keep records of Black people's births, marriages, divorces, education, work, and deaths, after learning a woman's killing couldn't be investigated because the police had no information about her. It's an altruistic project, and an example of Emil's complexity despite his racism, support of torture during a civil war in the 1970s, and homophobia, which impacts public policy. Through the narrative can grow tiring at times and get bogged down in minor details, Ndlovu deserves credit for her brilliant and meticulous characterization. This leaves readers with much to think about.
