Fiela's Child - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143185438 ISBN 13: 9780143185437

Synopsis

Raised by Fiela Kimoetie, a Black woman, after he wanders as a three-year-old into the South African forest, the young man who may be Lukas Van Rooyen, son of Afrikaaners, finds himself forced by the Magistrate to reorient his affections and values

About this title

Synopsis:

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 he 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.

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 this edition

• ISBN 10: 0143185438
• ISBN 13: 9780143185437
• Binding: Paperback