Whitethorn
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4.7 • 18 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
From Bryce Courtenay comes a new novel about Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people frantically opposed to the English.
The world is also on the brink of war and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany.
Tom's English name proves sufficient for him to be ostracised, marking him as an outsider. And so begin some of life's tougher lessons for the small lonely boy. Like the whitethorn, one of Africa's most enduring plants, Tom learns how to survive in the harsh climate of racial hatred. Then a terrible event sends him on a journey to ensure that justice is done. On the way, his most unexpected discovery is love.
Customer Reviews
Whitethorn
What a cracking story! This is a well researched and beautifully written book, written in the voice of Tom Fitzsaxby, a young orphan, known as Voestek by both his schoolmates and teachers at the Boys Farm（ a Government run orphanage）。 What it portrays is an indictment of the Colonial administration in Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau uprising leading beautifully into the absurdities of the apartheid system. This book made me laugh out loud and weep with shame for Britain's colonial past. The story is about the murder and mutilation of a good and innocent Bantu and the prosecution 23 years later by his friend a 7 year old orphan boy, now a successful Barrister. It is a story of civil rights abuses, the systematic and murderous abuse of children at the hands of staff，who have scandalously taken advantage of their power to intimidate and brutalise the boys who should have cived their protection and care。 I am on the lookout for my net Bryce Courtney novel。