Historical fiction books from South Africa
Recommended historical fiction books (19)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you are into historical fiction here are some historical fiction books from South Africa for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.
11.
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
"In the eighteenth century, a giant strides the border of the Cape Colony frontier. Coenraad de Buys is a legend, a polygamist, a swindler and a big talker; a rebel who fights with Xhosa chieftains against the Boers and British; the fierce patriarch of a sprawling mixed-race family with a veritable tribe of followers; a savage enemy and a loyal ally. Like the wild dogs who are always at his heels, he roams the shifting landscape of southern Africa, hungry and spoiling for a fight."--Publisher description
12.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years : A Novel by Shubnum Khan EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE "Rich and swoony...an ambitious delight, with rich characters and some exceptionally lovely writing...This is the start of a major career." -- The New York Times Book Review AN INDIE NEXT PICK A LIBRARY READS PICK “A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse f... continue
13.
The Expedition to the Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenstrom EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
A powerful fable originally published by Faber in 1983, translated by Nobel laureate and two-time Booker prize winner J. M. Coetzee.
14.
The Heart of Redness : A Novel by Zakes Mda EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
In a new novel by one of the premier writers of the "new" South Africa, an exile returns from America--where he fled during the apartheid regime--to find his newly democratic country in a shambles. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
15.
The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
Helen Shaw is the daughter of white middle-class parents in a gold-mining town in South Africa. As Helen comes of age, her awareness of the African life around her grows. Her involvement with young blacks leads her into complex relationships of emotion and action in a culture of dissension.
16.
The Madonna of Excelsior : A Novel by Zakes Mda EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
"A generous, patient, wry and intelligent voice...[that] suggests not just a writer who can seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor. We also encounter a writer who has the power to shock and frighten us, to astound and anger and unsettle us...In short, his is a voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration." --Neil Gordon, New York Times Book Review Selection, Summer Reading, New York Times Book Review In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex bet... continue
17.
The Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
In 1869, an exiled Russian novelist returns to St Petersburg to collect the effects of his dead stepson, Pavel. But the stepson's incriminating papers have been found by the Tsarist police and the novelist finds himself drawn into an underworld of suspicion, revolution and danger.
18.
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
“The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.” –The New York Times “Unabashedly uplifting . . . asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–‘the power of one’–can prevail.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives ... continue
19.
Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
A modern classic by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee. His latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state. J. M. Coetzee's pr... continue