Thursday, March 20, 2014

Not a read you will soon forget.

This interface of white people and the Xhosa seems to be Whyle’s current and enduring fascination, and he renders it pared down to the essentials, in measured and beautiful prose.
Original sources of diaries, reports and other documents are used to underpin a fictional realisation of events, some real and some imagined. Set in pristine paradise, it is not a read you will soon forget.
This small gem deserves a place on the bookshelves of serious readers; a cherished fragment, unpretentious and incomplete, it creates an enduring set of images...

Jane Rosenthal in the Mail and Guardian.