Fiela's Child - Softcover

Matthee, Dalene

4.05

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140084789 ISBN 13: 9780140084788

Publisher: Penguin, 1987

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In Africa a child wanders too far into the Knysna Forest. He never returns. Nine years later, two government officials, working on a census, find a white child living with a Coloured family in the mountains on the other side of the forest. They take him away from the stricken Fiela, who has brought him up, and give him back to his 'original' family. Whipped into using a new name and calling strangers 'ma' and 'pa', Benjamin is so stunned that the cannot cry and waits for Fiela to reclaim him. But Fiela, powerless before authority, never comes. So Benjamin has to grow up before he can go in search of the truth.

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From the Back Cover:

Set in nineteenth-century rural south Africa, Fiela's Child tells the gripping story of Fiela Kometie and a white, three-year-old child, Benjamin, whom she finds crying on her doorstep. For nine years Fiela raised Benjamin as one of her own children. But when census takers discover Benjamin, they send him to an illiterate white family of woodcutters who claim him as their son. What follows is Benjamin's search for his identity and the fundamental changes affecting the white and black families who claim him.

About the Author:

Dalene Matthee, born in South Africa in 1938, is the author of a collection of short stories, Die Judasbok, and five novels, including Circles in a Forest and The Mulberry Forest.

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