num_pages: 0
description: Set in nineteenth-century rural Africa Fiela's Child tells the gripping story of Fiela Komoetie and a white three-year old child Benjamin whom she finds crying on her doorstep. For nine years Fiela raises 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.Everything a novel can convincing thought-provoking upsetting unforgettable and timeless.Grace Ingoldby New Statesman Fiela's Child is a parade that broadens and humanizes our understanding of the conflicts still affecting South Africa today.Francis Levy New York Times Book ReviewA powerful creation of time and place with dark threads of destiny and oppression and its roots in the almost Biblical soil of a storyteller's art.Christopher Wordsworth The GuardianThe characters in the novel live and breathe; and the landscape is so brightly painted that the trees birds elephants and rivers of old South Africa are characters themselves. A book not to miss. Kirkus Reviews
language: English
title: Fiela's Child
publisher: University of Chicago Press