Search for your favourite author or book

The History of Man

ISBN 
9781485904212
Format 
Paperback
Recommended Price 
R340.00
Published 
October 2020
About the book: 
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.
 
Other titles by this author 
About the Author

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of the bestselling novel  The Theory of Flight,  winner of the 2019  Sunday Times  Fiction Prize and currently a school set work, and its follow-up,  The History of Man.  A winner of Yale University’s 2022  Windham Campbell  Prize, she is a writer, filmmaker, and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film from Ohio University. She has published research on  Saartjie Baartman  and she wrote, directed, and edited the award-winning short film  Graffiti.  She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Photograph © Nokuthula Sarah Ndhlovu

Others also viewed

Detective Michael Bennett's enemies know where to find him.   An anonymous tip about...
When it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this book, the author confronts our...
The story of YouTube, the global phenomenon which single-handedly upended traditional media and...
In the Eastern Cape, Stephen (Malusi) Mzamane, a young Anglican priest, must journey to his...